Servant
by Nerva al'Thor
Summary: -REPOST; COMPLETE; KZ; ZK- In Zero's eyes he saw heartbreak.
1. Chapter 1

**01.**

Zero could remember clearly that day they brought him in. He was clad in what had been an impeccable cream trench coat, and within he would be clad with a plain black dress shirt, paired white soft grey slacks that presently were ruined with dried blood. The coat looked expensive, but it was ruined along with the cashmere scarf, and like the slacks, they were ruined and caked with dried blood. Outside he would look like a child, and Zero knew he was looking at a child's visage – he stood at middling height, and like the rest of his kind he would be pale, but his hair was deep auburn and tapered around his face in light waves. His eyes were crimson, and they showed no worry, no emotion at all, as he was led into the hunters' headquarters. Zero could also clearly remember the chains. The child's wrists were bound by manacles too heavy for a human, and the chains snaked upward, crossing on his chest and back, eventually to join the main fast of the manacles by his wrists. Zero knew the chain themselves and the manacles were laced with a preservation charm – he was yet to learn how to perfect them, but he was getting there – and the point of them was that the child would not be destroyed once he stepped into the interior of the hunter buildings. The buildings were laced with nasty surprises for vampires who'd foolishly try to invade. Zero did not want to be on the business end of those unseen protections, and god forbid, he hoped to keep that way forever.

The kid was a Kuran, that much Zero could tell, and outwardly they seemed to be the same age, thirteen. But it was rare for the hunters to put such a young pureblood into custody. He wondered what the kid had gotten himself into as he watched the older hunters usher him into the deeper area of the castle. As if he had given voice to his question, Kaito Takamiya beside him gave an answer he didn't exactly look for.

"Reduced his uncle into pieces," Kaito explained. "He isn't exactly dead, but still, he got reduced to thousands of tiny bloody bits. His parents have also vanished, leaving only piles of ashes inside the Kuran ancestral home. He was the only one alive, holding his uncle's sword. Ergo, he's the only suspect."

Zero understood that even pureblood children posed a threat to their own families. His master had taught him well; with vampires, you simply couldn't rely on physical attributes. This was especially true with purebloods, what with their ability to possess descendants and weaker-willed relatives. But for that kid to actually take down three adult Kuran purebloods, Zero knew why the association brought him in. The Senate would be reluctant to dispose of another rare pureblood master, and would not act on the matter. The hunters on the other hand, had ancient oaths to keep.

* * *

"Think of it as a hands-on training."

That was what their master, Yagari Toga, had told them when Zero and Kaito were given a new task – to watch over their newly-acquired prisoner. Kaito took to the assignment with his customary steely face, as always, when he was bracing for something really unpleasant and dangerous. Zero for the most part was uncertain, he knew he was a talented hunter trainee, but he couldn't help but wonder about the wisdom of giving him this important task. He was by no means underestimating himself, but this was a pureblood, and for now, his abilities were still a short call from Kaito's. His master turned to him.

"As long as he's chained he won't be able to do anything, you know."

Zero had the decency and shame to allow himself a faint trace of a blush as he looked down briefly onto his shoes. "I wasn't really…"

"Don't tell me you're actually scared of that boy?" said Kaito, thumping him on the back. "What, do you take me for a fool?"

"It's not that," Zero said in defense, looking up to both his senior and his mentor, who was currently sitting on his office desk and clutching a snow globe. It was strange to say the least to realize that Yagari Toga had an office desk back at HQ. He wasn't exactly the office type of hunter. "It's just I'm wondering, really, there are more hunters far experienced than me, master."

"You're a Kiryuu," Toga snorted, and as far as he was concerned, that was the explanation for everything, and the conversation was over. "Besides, it's about time you got into close proximity with the _real_ enemies, Zero."

Real enemies. Zero wouldn't deny that at his age, he could hunt a Level E no problem. He could hold his own against an average D-class and C-class, but as to B-class and purebloods, he would still need help. But he was constantly training and improving. And right now, his master decided he needed to step up his training. So be it, despite his reservations.

The day passed on without much event; Zero had been given the _Bloody Rose_, with the specific instructions from Yagari Toga that he was to train with it every day – to get the feel of his new weapon, and to get used to all of its strengths and weaknesses. He was not yet an official hunter, and his master did bend some rules in giving him a hunter weapon in advance, and when he'd tried to object to it, Yagari had given the same excuse with a curt nod and a snort.

He was a Kiryuu. That explained everything.

So when he arrived home in the present apartment his family was renting, Zero was very much aware of the extra weight in his backpack. Kaito had packed the Bloody Rose for him by wrapping it with cloth and tucking it into the farthest end of his bag; he had to take a train and bus ride on the way home after all, and they needed to keep the gun secured so as not to raise questions. Zero didn't have a hunter's ID yet to excuse him lugging around a gun or a sword in public transportation.

"Zero!"

He smiled widely as Ichiru came running out the door to greet him with an all-too-familiar hug. From within the house their mother smiled and went to stand by the door to usher them both in. Their father was not home yet.

"Hey, Ichiru, you really shouldn't move around too much. Didn't you just recover from a bad flu?" Zero, still smiling, said as he entered the house and deposited his backpack onto the couch.

"I'm not so useless, Zero," Ichiru answered with a small reproachful look as he sat down beside Zero's pack.

His brother's statement gave him pause. Zero sighed and wrapped his arms around his twin. Always, Ichiru had been forced to stay indoors. Zero couldn't help but feel he stole his twin's potential and future, no matter what their parents said. No matter what Ichiru said.

_You can't have two perfect hunters. The world is too screwed to grant you two perfect things in one shot._ That was what Yagari Toga had told him before, regarding Ichiru's incapacity to live the life of a true Kiryuu hunter.

"I'm sorry, Ichiru, I didn't mean it that way.."

Ichiru didn't answer, just relaxed into the hug. He was a bit chill this evening. Meanwhile Zero let go and went to help their mother set the table.

"Father isn't home yet?" he looked up at their mother's kind face as he was handed the plates.

"No, he was asked to stay to follow up some things regarding the Kuran incident."

Ah. The Kuran incident. So the word had already reached his mother. Ichiru went over to help serve the soup, and soon the three of them prayed for grace, and dug into the delicious dinner their mother had cooked. They had mushroom soup, chicken and buttered veggies. Ichiru also informed him that they had lavender ice cream in the fridge.

"Mother, do you think the Kuran boy killed his parents?" Zero asked after a mouthful of veggies. "I mean. I don't actually doubt the thing with his uncle; it's not uncommon for family quarrels, but, his parents?"

"Don't put it past purebloods to consume their own," their mother replied, a mild frown on her face. "Though that's rare these times, it was quite common during the wars. Purebloods consumed another to gain more power to try combat the newly-risen vampire hunters. They refused to acknowledge that our weapons could kill them, and they thought consuming their own would make them somehow immune. But that was nothing, of course. It didn't work the way they expected. In the end it reduced their number, the more aggressive ones of course, and that helped the Kuran monarchy to subdue the other clans and consolidate their power."

"So, the Kuran kid actually consumed his mom and dad?" Ichiru piped up over his soup.

"I don't think he did," Zero replied, looking at Ichiru from across the table. "He was all bloodied up when they took him in, but I couldn't sense anything going crazy with his aura. But I really don't know. Maybe he'd already stabilized when they caught him."

The conversation slowed down as the family enjoyed dinner. It was a peculiar thing to hunter families, Zero supposed. Morbidity was part of the meal. And then he remembered another important topic for tonight.

"Ah…I was…given my weapon."

"Really, Zero? WOW!" Ichiru leapt from his chair and ran to where his pack was sitting by the couch. It amazed Zero how Ichiru could find the strength in times like these, but he was glad his twin was improving. In the oddest ways, but there you were.

"Ichiru, slow down," their mother called.

But Ichiru was already taking out Zero's things from the bag, with care. And then after a minute he came across the bundle Kaito had wrapped. Unfolding the cloth, Ichiru soon held up the Bloody Rose under the light.

"Wow, this is so cool…" Ichiru murmured as he held the gun and tried to aim at a far wall. "It even has its own chain and clip! I wonder how many rounds you can fire from this? Have you tried it, Zero?"

"Um, no," Zero shook his head, and he rose too, to join Ichiru by the couch. Their mother started putting away the dishes. "I've been taught how to load and reload, and actually clean it but, I'm going to try it first thing tomorrow at the firing range after school."

"So cool," Ichiru went on, and then handed the gun over to Zero, who took it. "I wish I could have been a trainee too. Who knows what weapon I'd have been given, eh? Personally I prefer a Japanese sword."

Zero offered a smile to his twin, who smiled back. He chose not to say anything else lest he hurt Ichiru more with what had been happening. Their mother had joined them and asked if she may hold the gun, which Zero gave.

"I bet Toga didn't actually have a permit to give you this," she'd said. "Zero, you know, this is a first grade hunter weapon. Meaning, this gun was among the first hundred to be made out of the mother metal after it had been transmuted for the first time. That man, really," she shook her head. "He would get his ass whipped and served to him on a silver platter once the President realizes he's gave it to you when you haven't been inducted properly yet. I mean, honestly? He could have waited and just let you have a sword or another gun for the meantime."

"I know," Zero laughed. "I tried to refuse it, but master said I'm a Kiryuu and it shouldn't be a problem." That made their mother roll her eyes and mutter something about 'men' and 'being impatient' and 'stupid'.

* * *

That next day Zero accompanied Ichiru home from school first before going back, this time to the hunters' headquarters, Bloody Rose tucked carefully in his bag. He also had to take the detour home because he had to take spare clothes; earlier that day Yagari Toga had sent him a text message informing him that his first shift on guard duty was starting. He would be away for weekdays and make do in the HQ along with guard duty, and he would be allowed to go home on Saturdays.

Kaito was wolfing down an early dinner in the cafeteria when Zero caught up with him.

"You better eat," Kaito told him as he drew level.

"I'm good," Zero replied as he sat down. "Where's the prisoner anyway?"

"Down in the basements," Kaito reached for a banana and peeled it. "One of the lowest cells they could find. I've been to see him earlier. He looks all right, but you know with those monsters. They always have this uncanny talent to appear harmless when they want. They've given him a fresh change of clothes, and he's just there, sitting at the far end of the cell, fiddling with his chain or otherwise reading the book he'd requested. He asked for Shakespeare. Hamlet."

"Oh," was all Zero could answer as he watched Kaito finish his dessert.

"You sure you won't eat dinner?"

"Nope. I told you I'm good. Shall we go?"

* * *

The boy's name was Kaname. He had been the son of Haruka and Juuri Kuran, and the nephew of Rido, the one he reduced into thousands of tiny bloody bits, as Kaito had aptly described. For the most part Kaname was sitting quietly in his corner, reading the book he'd asked for. He always asked for books, finishing one in a day. He also ate very little human food and consumed only a blood tablet a day. The job was easy. Kaito and Zero stood inside the cell, playing cards or chatting randomly while keeping an eye out for their prisoner. Despite the severity of the crimes being imputed to him, Kaname was far from being executed. His status as a pureblood made things complicated, and as things stood, the vampire Senate had been displeased that association had taken him into custody. There seemed to be a heated negotiation going on as far as Zero knew, and the Senate was demanding the return of their prince, as there was no direct proof that Kaname had indeed consumed his parents. He certainly did not kill his uncle, just incapacitated him. For all purposes it might have been Rido who'd killed his own siblings Haruka and Juuri, and Kaname merely retaliated. The Senate was on the winning end of the bargaining, but the hunters weren't keen on letting their Kuran captive off just yet.

Ichiru was eager for any piece of information Zero might give him regarding the teenage prisoner.

"He's just…there, really," said Zero. "I really don't have anything to tell you. He's well-behaved and he doesn't try anything funny. He doesn't approach us if he needs to ask for anything. He likes burgers if he isn't popping a blood tablet into his mouth. Other than that he just reads and reads and reads."

Their father, it turned out, had been made part of the negotiating party. When he finally went home a week later, he was less than pleased.

"We won't be able to keep him locked up too long," he told his family one evening over dinner of ragout and yogurt. "The First Elder didn't sign the compromise, saying there's nothing in the laws and mutual agreements regarding trial of a pureblood – that had been kept exclusively in their jurisdiction. They've also tendered proof about how the child did only retaliate for the murder of his parents. He might be released in two to three days."

That suited Zero just fine. It meant he could get to focus on training and getting used to his gun.

* * *

"What do you know, you'd be released tomorrow! Isn't that great?"

The boy named Kaname looked up just as his two guards entered his cell for their shift. He had been expecting the news ever since he got thrown into this cell. But being into custody served his plans just right. He closed his book after bookmarking his page and sat up straighter, to feign interest in what the two young hunters had to say.

"About time, they were a bit slow on the negotiations," Kaname allowed himself a faint smile, while sizing up the two. They were young, and he could overpower them. After that initial step, a trip to the armory would be in order. The armory, if his calculations were correct, were about 100 meters from where he was. The seals were something he could break, and inside he needed to find his other weapon. How that weapon ended up with the hunters he could not now fathom, only his children had been careless. But that didn't matter. He already had Artemis. What he needed now was the other one.

"You think?" it was the older hunter who liked to yak and yak. The silver-haired one – the Kiryuu boy – liked to keep quiet and just watch him.

"Oh, I do believe so," Kaname replied as he rested his hands on his lap. He glanced at the bars. Basic defensive charms. They neglected to fortify those charms; obviously, these cells were only contemplated for the use of the most rabid of Level E's, not actually for detaining purebloods. They must have been confident because the cells were so close to the armory. It would have been suicide for any other vampire to try escape, and so deep underground too.

The bars would be no problem. As for the armory, it would be easy going through cracks in the form of a mist. But first he had to see for an opportunity regarding his guards first. And the chains. The chains too, were of no import. The charms on these were a bit tricky, and Kaname spent a good day trying to remember the appropriate spells to disarm them. But now he could manage. Now if he could just…

He rose. The sudden action surprised his guards, who immediately shifted into a defensive stance. They were alert, Kaname would give them that.

"I'd like a burger," he said, taking steps and halting just an exact 50 meters away from where his guards stood. He let his manacled arms relax. "That one with the cheese you got for me, I like it. Would it be possible?"

The older hunter, Kaito Takamiya, sighed with annoyance. "Of course, Your Highness. After all, this will be the last time I'll be dealing with the likes of you." He turned to his companion. "Zero, can you manage?"

"Yes."

There was a clang and the older hunter exited the cell. Kaname folded his legs underneath him and sat down.

* * *

Zero, in truth, was suddenly nervous having to be left alone with the prisoner. Always, it had been him Kaito sent up to get the cheeseburger, fries and soda if Kaname Kuran asked for it. He didn't expect Kaito would leave him there, but he didn't let his uneasiness be seen. He remained sitting down and holding his cards, as Kaname Kuran sat down as well. If only in terms of physique, Zero was sure he could hold his own against the dark-haired kid. But the boy was pureblood, and there all the disadvantages lied. Zero wasn't sure he would be up against a pureblood, even if Kaname Kuran was his age. It wasn't that he didn't trust his abilities. He was worried about his lack of training.

"What's your name?" Kaname Kuran asked.

Zero didn't answer. He hoped Kaito called for delivery and would go back now. It was stupid to be nervous so near the armory, but Zero decided it was better to be nervous than sorry.

"That's good. Don't talk to prisoners."

Kuran raised his manacled wrists. Despite himself, Zero discreetly had a hand on his gun.

"Now, if you'd excuse me."

There was a sharp, loud crackle, and sparks flew. That was it, and the manacles split neatly into halves, and fell to the floor. The smell of burned but healing flesh pervaded the cell, and Kaname Kuran was on his feet.

"I'd like to go now."

Things happened too fast.

* * *

Kaito Takamiya was sure it would be the worst decision of his life, and in the next months and years to come, he promised himself that he would make up for it with anything at all, to Zero. When the alarms blared, a crisp "Shit!" burst from his lips, and he dropped the burger and the fries and the soda and broke into a run, reaching for his hunter weapon as he went. Goddamn. He didn't expect that all. But somehow, for some reason, something told him he should've expected something like this to happen. But it was too late now for that kind of that regret. He could only hope that nothing had happened to Zero.

"Let me at it!" he yelled as he pushed Jinmu aside and went into the elevator that led down to the basements with their master.

"You shouldn't have," Yagari Toga hissed, and Kaito only looked ahead, his heart pounding inside his chest.

"Come on, come on," he snarled, pressing the button for B10 again and again.

There would be a lockdown of up to the fifth basement, he would be sure of it. And the only ones down below would be himself, Toga, Zero and the Kuran brat. At the outset, it looked to Kaito that they had the advantage.

* * *

Despite the smoke, Kaname could see clearly. He reached out and tore the useless door to the armory off its hinges with a deafening crack, and tossed it aside as if it were paper. He stepped inside the room, and as expected, met no resistance. Hunter swords, spears, axes and lances were neatly arranged in racks against the walls. Tables displayed guns, rifles, daggers and short swords. There were no anti-vampire charms here; the weapons themselves would be enough. But the association overlooked one important thing.

A Kuran would not be harmed by hunter weapons.

And they didn't expect that they would be holding a Kuran near their armory.

Kaname's steps were brisk and quick, and led him to the end of the armory, where the first grade weapons would be stored. He had no intention to inflict other damage. He needed to retrieve his other weapon, and then he would leave. That was all. That and he could go think on his plans on how to try get rid of Rido for-

A bang, and searing pain. Kaname felt the crackle of _her_ power course through his system, nullifying his terrifying healing abilities. Another well-aimed bullet and he would be dead. And that wasn't in his plans just yet.

Blood pooled by his feet, and he could smell anger, fear, and the blood of a hunter.

He'd turned.

Zero Kiryuu was by the doorway, the side of his head bleeding, both hands holding up a very familiar gun that still smoked from the muzzle.

The gun that Kaname intended to get.

"How nice of you to spare me the trouble," he said, raising a hand to the gaping hole by his left shoulder. It hurt like fuck. Even though he helped make the hunter weapons he still hated them. They hurt, and it would take weeks for him to heal off the wounds. Assuming he could get out alive. "If you could hand over my gun, please." He took a step forward.

"Stay back, vampire!" Zero yelled as he'd fired a second shot, this time to the floor. Blood pounded in his ears. He knew he would be in trouble if he'd killed Kuran right here and now, there were so many things to consider. But he was trying to escape! Never mind that he was going to be released, there would have been time for that, right now, Kuran was breaking the agreements, but—

"If you're going to kill a vampire, don't think of anything else except his death."

The moment's hesitation would, literally speaking, change his life forever. Much later, when Zero could already laugh about it, he would think of how ridiculous it had been to spare seconds thinking about the treaties and agreements signed by the association and the vampire Senate. It was the stupidest thing he had ever done in his life. He should have shot Kuran. Fired bullets right toward his head, and then toward his heart, and then there would be no hope of recovery for him, and he would shatter like glass and scatter to the winds.

Fuck all the treaties, Zero would say to himself much later.

White-hot pain at the right side of his neck. Zero wouldn't remember if he'd screamed. He could remember gripping Bloody Rose so hard he could no longer feel his hands. He could remember gasping, and falling. He could remember being reduced to a heap by Kuran's feet, a bleeding heap gasping for life, his free hand clutching his bleeding neck. He would remember hearing his master's and Kaito's voices. The bang of his master's rifle as he'd fired.

He would be delirious in pain, feverish with the sudden change, too afraid to actually realize what had transpired. He would be taken with tremors as the change overtook him rapidly, and in the heat haze of the transformation, Kuran's voice would suddenly ring clear in his head.

**Take him down.**

There was no naming the 'him', but somehow, Zero realized who Kuran was referring to. And like a scene from a morbid movie, Zero would rise up like a corpse, and jump right at Kaito Takamiya and bite him viciously on the neck to protect his _master_, to get rid of the other hunter now trying to stop his _master_ from getting away.

He would remember the horror on Kaito's face.

And then there would be a monstrous snarl, and the scent of his and Kaito's blood, mingling with Kuran's, and the world would be lost in pain and crimson.

* * *

Zero would wake up much later in a hospital. There would be nothing of the old him for a while. He would sit up, and he would not see his parents or his twin brother, and he would keep staring ahead, remembering the look of horror on Kaito's face. He still would not say anything as his parents would take him home.

He would remember his _master's_ voice.

Slowly, as Zero regained consciousness from the trauma, a resolve formed within.

_I'll kill him._

_I'll track him down and kill him._

_I'll kill him._


	2. Chapter 2

**.02**

He could remember distancing himself from his family. It wasn't the angry distance with them, no; it wasn't like that at all. It just came to him that one summer afternoon, as sudden as he had regained himself, his thinking, his self-awareness. And when he was aware, he knew. He didn't need to see the cross they'd branded on his neck. He _knew_, and he had decided, without really putting effort to it. He could remember getting up out of bed and finding the house mostly empty. He'd paused by the doorway, looking around at the room. As a hunter trainee his senses were already sharp, but now, the world was one hundred times richer, more vibrant than ever before.

He shied away from the patch of sunlight filtering through the window. Even the sight of sunlight made him nauseous. He retreated, away from the window, until his back touched the wall. Even the wall felt distinctly…_there_, behind him. Even the feel of the cloth that made up his pajamas, rubbing against his skin. He could feel every rivet, every bump, every tiny knot and ridge in the fabric, every stitch, every hem. He slowly slid into a crouch, his hands clutching his head. He shut his eyes, and he was painfully aware of his breathing, the same way he was aware that no, he was different, and every sunrise would now hurt his eyes.

He remembered that pale, dark-haired boy with crimson eyes, just the same age as he was, extending a hand for his gun. It was _his_ gun, the boy had claimed. Hand over _his_ gun, he'd told Zero. From his crouch he was suddenly aware of Kaito's presence from downstairs. Kaito, it seemed, was aware that he had woken. He could hear footsteps. And then the door opened.

"…Zero?"

He didn't have the courage to look up. He was afraid of what he'd see. Even from where he sat he could smell the faint whiff of antiseptic. He seemed to fold into himself, curling into more of a tight ball.

"Zero…hey, Zero!"

"…go away!" he rasped. The smell of antiseptic made way for something else, something that Kaito held within. Something hot, with a rusty taste – something that made his throat ache. "Go…go away..!"

To be eternally thirsty was the curse of all vampires, and nobody felt it more than a former human. Zero's hand spasmed, and he kept his eyes shut, determined not to open up to anything around him.

"Are you thirsty? Come on, they said you have to take the tablets as soon as you come to yourself. Your parents are off at work and Ichiru's still at school-."

Slowly, he opened his eyes. Kaito was also in a crouch in front of him. Kaito had never looked worse for wear before to Zero. His neck was bandaged. His face was also paler and thinner than what Zero remembered. His hair…no, it wasn't just brown. That color wasn't just brown, and Kaito's eyes weren't just blue, he was…

He could remember holding out a hand and touching Kaito's cheek. His senior felt frail, even to him. Like a small movement would snap his neck and—

"Take me away," Zero said, finding his voice. He slowly freed himself from his crouch. "I don't care, take me away, take me back to headquarters, I have to get away. I can't stay here. Please, let's leave now."

Kaito eyed him with suspicion, as he usually eyed vampires he weren't sure would attack. Zero didn't need to look to know Kaito was holding his weapon.

_I'm an enemy._

He rose. The sudden movement surprised his senior. Zero walked toward the closet and started pulling out all of his clothes.

"What are you doing, Zero?"

"I can't stay here. I have to leave."

"Where are you going?"

"To headquarters. I have to become stronger."

Stronger, in order to kill his master.

* * *

Ichiru had been angry at him, but once Zero had decided, that decision was final. He returned to headquarters, very much aware of how the other hunters looked at him as he entered through the main doorway. The brand on his neck was the only thing that kept the ancient protections from obliterating him where he stood. He'd brought all of his clothes and his most treasured possessions, little trinkets and photos of his family. He went to his master, and Yagari Toga looked at him for a long while in silence.

"Master, am I still your student?"

Toga puffed out numerous smoke rings before answering with a snort. "Since when did you drop out?"

Training. Zero immersed himself into all the work his master threw in his direction. He refused to go home and stopped attending school, and did not want to go home to his family during weekends. He tried writing letters in his free time, explaining why he'd left the house. He didn't want to put them in harm's way. Heaven forbid, he did not want to live off his own family. He didn't want to ask them for their blood every time his throat felt dry, no, he would never. He was also afraid of that time when he'd finally lose his sanity to his hunger for blood. That, he was afraid of the most. What if he'd attacked Ichiru suddenly? Or his mother? His father?

Zero knew he would never forgive himself if he did.

* * *

His hours were odd. During mornings he would be asleep, there in that small, bare room he'd claimed for himself in the east wing of the main building of the headquarters. The lone window into the room he'd covered with tight blinds that were always closed. At noon he would wake, do a few rounds in the firing range and report to the missions department and see if there were any hunt orders issued for him. On weekdays he would go to school, because despite the seclusion he had entered, his parents still insisted on his education, and after he'd scraped by middle school, he enrolled himself in Cross Academy, an institute owned by Kaien Cross, one of the highest-ranking hunters – not to mention one of the oldest ones – around. Kaien was also a family friend, and his mother said it made her breathe a little easier to realize he would at least be looked after at Kaien's school.

Zero didn't comment, but he knew he didn't need anyone to look after him. It was more of he needed someone at the ready to shoot him once he'd go berserk and bite anything within reach.

It had been four years since he had been bitten. And even the doctors in the HQ said that his resistance and willpower were extraordinary. Usually, a bitten human degenerated into Level End in a matter of months, cases like his were few and far between, considering too the suddenness of the biting and change. The chemistry department formulated a special blend of blood tablets just for him, and for a few years they did the trick, Zero could say he almost felt normal.

But he knew too, that his normalcy would end soon.

* * *

The alarm clock beeped. With vampire hearing, an alarm clock could be hell on earth. Under a mound of pillows and blankets, Zero's hand came up and fumbled around, and when his fingers closed in on the clock, he hurled it across the room where it smashed into bits against the far wall.

Silence was a luxury.

Zero sat up on the bed, for a moment wondering where he was in the darkness of the dormitory room. Slowly, he let his senses relax. He could smell the sunshine outside and the myriad of scents from the Day Class students now walking toward their classes. Reaching for his bedside table Zero picked up the small box that contained blood tablets. He opened it and shook out four tablets and popped them into his mouth to swallow without water. As always, they tasted like shit. They were even worse than water; during his first time with them he'd considered adding them to water but decided against it. After the first mouthful he threw up, and he didn't try it again.

He stepped into the shower and relished the cold water against his skin. Zero liked his baths, and took his sweet fifteen minute time, never mind that he was going to be late for Math class. After all, the teacher was just Kaito, and he could really do something much more productive than just listen to the older hunter yak and yak about manners and whatnot. That done, he decided he would be late for class this Monday, yet again. And Kaito wouldn't be able to complain about it.

The uniforms were something he didn't like. They had an idiotic profusion of buttons that were made to resemble roses, and for the life of him, Zero couldn't understand why Kaien Cross over decorated the students with those ridiculous tie clips and whatnot. They even had to wear vests inside the school coat. Zero admitted that the town where the academy was built was chill for most of the year, but that was just a waste of time. He felt lazy just thinking of all the buttons he had to close, so he often left his vest and school coat open. Fuck the stupid tie clip, he wasn't wearing it.

He exited his dorm room to find the halls empty. It was fifteen minutes into the start of the first subjects for the day, and he was, by all standards, already considered absent. But he didn't care about that. And anyway if he went in he'd disturb Kaito's lecture, and that would piss off the other hunter. Zero loved pissing him off. In the littlest ways of course.

"Late again," came Ichiru's familiar voice, and Zero paused and half-turned to allow his twin to catch up. It was only last year that Ichiru started talking with him again, but Zero knew it was his fault deciding how he did, and he did try his best to go home every weekend now, to his family. "I swear if your grades weren't so good, all the teachers would love to move for your expulsion."

"I'd love to get expelled," Zero said flatly as he and his brother walked together to class. For the most part he was happy that Ichiru started improving on his health; that too, had been an unexpected surprise over the past four years. He still couldn't be a hunter, however, because even though he'd stopped being sickly, he still lost his breath in a matter of minutes. That and he still had asthma, too. But the association had been happy to let Ichiru work in the archives and help in the hunt order department.

"Early in the morning and so serious already," Ichiru replied with raised eyebrows as he opened the door and went into the class first. Zero silently followed.

Inside, Kaito looked murderous. Zero could almost imagine a diatribe coming his way, and just for the heck of it he flashed a faint, smug grin toward their 'teacher' as he slid into his seat. Ichiru had already made himself happy in his own seat at the back of the class, and was presently smiling away and chatting off with the girls that made up his fan club. He was the popular one, Ichiru. His twin had always been easy-going and approachable, unlike him, who mostly loved to skulk down the hallways alone, hands in his pockets, and glare at anyone who tried to start a conversation with him.

"You've been called."

Zero turned to his seatmate and probably the only girl who could stand his presence. Yuuki Nakagawa was small and petite, a tomboyish freshman who excelled in nothing but P.E and recess. She had short auburn hair that reached her shoulders and huge expressive brown eyes. They'd been classmates since middle school, and she was probably the only girl friend he'd tolerated after he'd returned to school. She was an adopted daughter of the Nakagawa family, which presently ruled the restaurant business. She'd told him she was adopted as a conversation starter during their freshmen orientation here at Cross, and she explained she didn't have anything to complain about – her parents loved her and she loved them. She also liked parfaits and the stir-fried pork and ginger set down in the cafeteria. Sometimes, however, her chattering could get so unstoppable Zero would just get up and walk out on her.

"Called for what?" Zero said as he rested his head on his arms. While he could tolerate sunlight nowadays, the vampiric languor always came to him during mornings and made him sluggish. Sometimes it took a real effort just trying to keep himself awake during classes. And most of the time, he failed, and ended up sleeping by the desk. The teachers had long since learned to tolerate him, in lieu of his outstanding marks.

"Oh, just attendance. I'm sure Sir Kaito will call you in one of his – ah, here he goes now."

"Zero Kiryuu, if you could solve this problem for me please?"

He sighed and stood up and walked toward the front of the class, picked up a piece of chalk and looked at the problem. After a few seconds, Zero wrote the solution and turned to go back to his seat, but—

"Ah, ah, who said I was done with you? Explain how you arrived at your answer."

He huffed in impatience and glanced at what he wrote on the board, and then explained in the flattest voice he could manage. Out of the corner of his vision he could see Ichiru laughing quietly from where he sat. Yuuki had her eyes on him, but she was busy talking with Yori Wakaba, her best friend, and they were both shaking their heads at him.

"…very good. Sit down."

He sat back down and Yuuki thumped him on the arm. Kaito failed to try shoot him down again today.

"What? And will you stop punching me?" Zero snapped quietly at his seatmate as he took out his blood tablets and popped five into his mouth.

"Is that candy? Can I have one?" said Yuuki, trying to peek at his blood tablet case.

"Will you please shut up already? And no, you can't have one!"

* * *

He, Ichiru and Kaito liked to have their lunch by one of the numerous gazebos in the school grounds. For today the cafeteria had salt-broth ramen, one of the few things that made Zero happy. He held his takeout bowl high as he happily drank the soup off, while Kaito and Ichiru were discussing about the note Kaien Cross had passed on to them earlier. Something about wanting to meet them at six in the evening today, in the director's office.

"The new dormitory buildings are finished. What's the betting he's going to talk to us about that Night Class he had been planning for years?" Kaito was saying over his yakiniku bento. "He's nuts, Kaien. Overeager vampire teenagers are something to control. I wonder which pureblood he's invited to actually oversee the Night Class."

"Probably that guy, his old friend, Izaya Shoutou? Guy's so bored maybe Kaien Cross bullied him into becoming a teacher," Ichiru said.

"That sleepyhead?" Kaito snorted with laughter. "What's the betting he falls asleep faster than he can call attendance?"

They laughed. It was noontime, and Zero shifted to shy away from the patch of sunlight falling near where he sat. He put his emptied bowl down and watched his brother and Kaito laugh their heads off.

"What's he thinking, letting those _things_ in the school?" He spoke up, and both Ichiru and Kaito fell silent. "Things are over if the pureblood double crosses us. One word and all those fanged teenagers will slaughter everyone in the campus."

It was no news that Zero had serious, prescription-grade trust issues with any fanged person. He was especially homicidal when it came to purebloods. He had tried putting his plans into action the moment he got inducted as a hunter; he wanted to leave and try finding Kaname Kuran and killing him with his own gun, the Bloody Rose. But once again, the complicated web of diplomacy and agreements prevented Zero from what he liked to do. It didn't help that the hunter association had lost in the negotiations regarding his case. The vampire senate dismissed it as an insignificant matter in a three-page opinion prepared by the First Elder. It was their fault for imprisoning Kaname Kuran, and ultimately it was Zero's fault for standing in Kuran's way. His being bitten was entirely his fault, not the pureblood's. Zero could remember how angry his father was; he'd punched the walls until his fists bled.

"That's why we're here, aren't we?" Kaito said, patting his knee as if to pacify him.

"Whatever," Zero said as he stood up and went back to the classrooms.

* * *

Their future job, as it turned out, would be to stand by as Class Exchange would take place and act as mob control. Kaien Cross had cheerfully explained to them over tea how the Night Class was going to work. Fifty B-class teens, to be led by a pureblood whose name wasn't disclosed yet. Ichiru and Kaito mostly did the talking, and Zero just kept silent on the couch, holding his teacup and looking at the tea. Out of curiosity and not really listening to the conversation, Zero took out his blood tablets and let two of the white things drop into the tea, which slowly became red as the tablets dissolved.

He raised the cup to his lips and drank.

…It was a bad idea.

Zero was quickly on his feet and all but ran into the nearest bathroom he could find. He dropped on all fours and vomited the vile mix of tea and tablets, along with everything he had for dinner. He reeled; his head felt light one moment, and then leaden the next. It was as if all of his strength left his limbs and he slumped against the bath tub, unmoving.

"Zero! Hey, Zero!"

Ichiru was beside him. He could sense Kaito and Kaien Cross by the bathroom doorway.

"Hey, you all right?" Kaito asked.

"I'm fine," he replied, lightly pushing Ichiru away as he got on his feet. His hands still shook. "Didn't expect tea and blood tablets would be so evil."

"Are you sure that's just it?" Kaien Cross asked. "Are you sure you aren't starting to reject blood tablets?"

The question hung in the air for several minutes.

"I'd know if I was," Zero replied. "And I'm not. Yet."

_But that's the thing with insane persons; they really didn't know it themselves once they've crossed the line or not._

* * *

They arrived at around eleven in the evening, in limousines and other expensive cars. They toted around the latest, designer luggage and clothes, and even the Day Class, most of whom came from the richest families, would surely be envious. To the ignorant they would be a bunch of good-looking young men and women, but to Zero, as he watched them unload their belongings from their cars, they were nothing but monsters. Kaien Cross welcomed them with a smile, but Zero knew they were all walking on a precarious bridge made of glass. He kept his distance as he watched them from under a tree. Many of them glanced up at the dorm and classroom buildings, in wonder. Some were stealing looks at the faraway lights of the Sun Dormitory.

One of them noticed him, a blond and blue-eyed young man, who whispered to a taller, copper-haired guy beside him. Zero didn't appreciate the scrutiny and stared right back, until the two looked away out of their own accord.

Kaien Cross was beckoning him. Zero huffed and approached, to stand beside his brother and Kaito. Kaien Cross was talking to another blond, this time a green-eyed, vivacious noble who beamed pleasantly at them all.

"Ah, my manners! Takuma Ichijou, Vice President – hello, hello and hello to you!" the blond chirped, grabbing Kaito's and Ichiru's hands and shaking them. Zero kept his hands in his pockets and stared at the vampire, from head to toe.

"Ah, erm, sorry~?" Takuma shifted on his feet under Zero's scrutiny. Zero looked away.

"No problem, he's just under the weather tonight," Kaien said. "These here will be your prefects, see? Kaito Takamiya, Math teacher – and here, Ichiru Kiryuu, and this one here, this very happy young man, is his older twin Zero."

As if his name was a huge red flag, the other Night Class students who had been busy chatting with companions or taking out their luggage and boxes all paused in whatever they were doing to spare him a one-over. Zero glared right back at them.

"I'm very happy to meet you all!" Takuma said as he bowed. "Please take care of us!"

He was happy to let Kaien, Kaito and Ichiru do the work. Kaien led the way into the new Moon Dormitory, and soon Zero was left to his own devices on the grounds. Lights slowly flickered into life from within the Moon Dorm's windows. He glanced up at them, those golden glimmers, silent. Vampires in the campus, just how far could they trust these monsters?

* * *

A contrast to the Day Class, the Night Class' uniform was white, with black trimmings. Their dress shirt was pitch black, an antithesis against the Day Class's white. White was a color visible in darkness; a Night Class student could easily be seen whether inside or outside the classrooms. The Day Class had been unaware of the Night Class's presence until three days into their arrival. The sharper students had suddenly noticed that the new dormitory building was now occupied, and the news spread like wildfire in the high school section, and soon this too was followed by the schedule for Class Exchange, which would be at six in the evening.

Ichiru and Zero stood by near the Moon Dormitory gates at around five thirty, waiting. Around them, innocent clusters of curious Day Class students milled about but at a polite distance, but that did nothing to dispel the excited, almost tense atmosphere for that afternoon. The clusters slowly grew in size as six in the evening approached, and Zero left his spot from under the tree and went to the nearest group and asked them to stay back.

Six o'clock sharp. Zero could hear the huge clock from the main building toll its hour, and exactly a minute later, the iron gates of the Moon Dormitory opened.

Takuma Ichijou led the neat line of the white-clad students. Zero stayed where he was, Bloody Rose concealed inside his school jacket as he watched the Night Class students. He had never dreamed to bring Bloody Rose inside the school grounds, but from now on, it looked like he would be taking it with him every waking moment.

"Oh, wow…" one of the Day Class girls murmured as the Night Class passed by.

Zero wondered where the pureblood leader was. Was it Izaya Shoutou, and if so, where was he? The blond guy and the copper-haired one from the few days past glanced at him as they went, and Zero did not spare them his attention. A peach-haired girl behind them also looked at him, and she did not waste any moment showing him her distaste by scowling at him. She huffed and walked after the two.

"They're all gorgeous…"

"Wow…"

"Did you see that guy with the wild-looking hair?"

"That blond one with green eyes is _hot_!"

"I wonder what that pigtailed girl's name is. Wouldn't mind getting on a first-name business, you know?"

Class Exchange took place without much of a hassle, and when the last Night Class student disappeared into the school building, the Day Class clusters slowly broke apart. Ichiru went to his side and let out a sigh as he held his wrapped, sheathed katana against his left shoulder.

"Whew, that went on smoothly, didn't it?" he said.

"For now," Zero murmured. "What's the betting they'll become a rabid mob in a week's time?"

* * *

A week of peace and order was what they had. When a junior girl named Yaeka shrieked and tried to jump at Senri Shiki to offer him roses and chocolate ("What the hell?" Ichiru had exclaimed), Zero knew they were in for the real, long haul. The girls were the root of the trouble, most of the time. They all turned into this writhing mob squealing 'Kyaa!' and other words of endearment, and soon Ichiru had to take two spare inhalers every time Class Exchange neared and took place. The boys organized themselves into groups and wore headbands on their foreheads and waved tarpaulin banners of their favorite Night Class girl, and for the most part it was okay with them, until someone started comparing Rima Tohya to Ruka Souen, and someone's fist hit the jaw of someone else, and then it was chaos.

For the first time in years, Zero had to raise his voice.

"YOU! GET OFF OF THAT TREE OR I'LL MAKE SURE YOU'RE SORRY YOU WERE EVER BORN!"

His reputation with the girls went downhill from there, but Zero didn't care.

During mornings, the Day Class talked about nothing except their favorite Night Class student during breaks. Zero was thankful Yori Wakaba and Yuuki Nakagawa weren't part of the rabid mob.

"I don't really like them," Yuuki told him one time over lunch in the cafeteria. They sat by the same table with Ichiru and Yori, and she had just finished her pork and ginger set and was now demolishing a fully-loaded glass of adzuki parfait. "They're kinda creepy, you know, Zero? I mean, who in their right minds would pick night class over daytime? Ugh, I don't think my attention span could take that."

Yori was nodding in agreement beside her as she finished her soup.

"Ugh, just last night the Rima fan club challenged the Seiren fan club into a gang war outside this coming Saturday," Ichiru said in disgust. "If this doesn't fix up, I'll petition for more members of the prefect squad, gods!" As if to emphasize his point Ichiru took out his inhaler and went for a shot of his med.

When Yuuki and Yori left the table, Zero turned to Ichiru.

"Where's their leader?"

"I don't know," Ichiru replied with a shrug. "But Takuma Ichijou says he'd be arriving tonight. Was held up by some Senate business – clearance shit, I think. I don't know exactly."

"Who is it anyway?"

"I dunno. I guess we'll find out later."

* * *

Class Exchange came and went, but there was no new face among the nightly cohort when they'd passed. Ichiru sat on the wall, swinging his legs as he ate his dinner. Zero excused himself and went to patrol around. The evening was balmy and just rightly warm, and despite things, Zero loved evenings like these in quiet. Hands in his pockets Zero walked around the school grounds, pausing in amusement at the fountain of an angel with water sprouting out of its butt.

Shaking his head, Zero went on to check the west gate, which was nearer the Moon Dormitory complex. As he approached he heard the unmistakable hum of a car engine dying down. He rounded an oak tree and found a black Porsche parked nearby. From within he could see the flash of a white Night Class school coat, and he knew that the latecomer pureblood leader had finally arrived. From where he stood he could make out one, two, suitcases crammed by the backseat along with lots of hardbound books.

The car door opened, and suddenly, Zero felt his heart race. He didn't understand it, but his heart raced and his blood pounded in his ears. He was anticipating something. Something. He didn't understand it.

The vampire looked the same, exactly the same as Zero remembered him. His auburn hair still tapered in soft waves, his eyes deep crimson. He was, if possible, paler than from when Zero saw him last, but he had become taller, and Zero knew they were the same height.

The cross brand on his neck seemed to hurt, and it hurt really bad, like from when the gaping wound that had once been there hurt, stinging, hurting him to the core. His hand spasmed and flew to the hurting spot on his neck, and Zero knew his purple eyes had made way for red.

He was anticipating a command from his master.

Every fiber of his being thrummed with that anticipation, with the willingness to obey. He was a _servant_, and he would do whatever Kaname Kuran asked of him, even if it was to take his own life, he was sure of it.

He couldn't breathe.

Every exhale came as a sharp pain lancing at him from all sides.

He was on his knees.

Those years of being apart from his _master_, he couldn't—

Kaname Kuran stood in front of him, and extended a hand and held his chin, and jerked his head up.

Zero looked at him with the hate he could muster.

"I was worried you'd degenerated," Kaname Kuran spoke, and Zero hated himself more for the sick desire of wanting to hear that voice, and now having finally heard it, he was _ecstatic_. "But you have a strong will to live, and that is well."

_KURAN!_

A flash of silver, and he had Bloody Rose's muzzle resting against Kuran's forehead. His finger was on the trigger, and all he had to do was _pull_, just pull the goddamn trigger and kill him, kill this demon in front of him and it would all be over—

"You can't kill me, Zero."

He gasped, and he felt blood flow from his eyes, his ears, and his nose. He shook with the sheer power of his hate and his despair, but his body resisted him, and would not do his bidding. He bled, and his shirt was stained with red, and he gasped more, and still his finger remained unmoving on the trigger.

A hand came up on his nape, and Zero was crushed into Kuran's chest, and as he watched his blood stained the immaculate white of Kuran's Night Class coat. Inside himself, Zero was screaming fit to die. Outside, he had become limp and unmoving, a bloodied, broken doll.

Kuran was stroking his silver hair.

"That's good," Kaname Kuran whispered against his left ear. "All according to plan."

Blood and roses, that was what Kuran smelled like.

Blood and roses, and Zero's blood.


	3. Chapter 3

**.03**

It was Ichiru who got angry for him. He could remember his twin rush toward the Headmaster's office, kick the door open and grab Kaien Cross by the collar and shake him. If Ichiru had been someone else, the sudden display of strength would have dispelled the fact that he had been sickly and would never be fit to be a vampire hunter. Ichiru had a messier way of getting angry, unlike him. Ichiru liked to yell and, if he could get his hands on the object of his temper, he would surely try to pound it to bits. Make him angry enough and he would unsheathe his katana.

"What the hell are you thinking?"

He could clearly recall how Ichiru shouted the words.

"It's all some sick joke to you, isn't it? You inconsiderate fool! And don't tell me about you losing someone, everyone here lost someone important! How could you do this to Zero? You might as well have spat on my brother's face! You bastard!"

Ichiru drew back, his right hand curled into a fist. He swung his fist forward but Zero caught his arm.

"Don't," was all he said, and instead punched Kaien Cross himself.

* * *

If the nobles who made up the Night Class attracted a good chunk of the high school populace, Kuran's arrival and subsequent, sudden presence in the next Class Exchange attracted even the middle school department and half of the university students. The bigger writhing mob of fanboys and fangirls soon proved too much for Ichiru to handle, and Kaito had to make arrangements to cancel his last two morning classes to take Ichiru's place in prefect duties. Kaname Kuran did not share his class's interest in the mob of students that awaited them every early evening. He often took his place at the very back of the nightly procession while Ichijou Takuma kept the lead; he always looked forward, never glancing here and there despite girls screaming his name. Zero watched him like a hawk, every day unfailing, from when he left the Night Class dormitory and until they returned from their classes at one in the morning. Always, he was looking forward, a mild frown gracing his ageless features.

_What are you planning, vampire?_

Zero was surprised one Tuesday of Class Exchange when Yuuki Nakagawa tugged his sleeve. She and her friend Yori were there at the lead of the mob he was in charge of. His surprise must have been evident on his face because even Yori Wakaba laughed.

"Don't tell me you've come to add to the stress?" he told the two girls, bluntly. "Because I'm telling you, I'm having enough every damn day with all these bimbos-!"

"Now that's rude," said Yuuki, chuckling as well. "Yori and I just wanted a glimpse of this 'prince' everyone's been squealing about, see? See if he's anything special aside from these creepy lot~!"

The nearest girls who'd heard Yuuki's words all swung to her, eyes a-glare.

"Uh-oh!" she squeaked as she hid behind Zero.

And then, the familiar creaking of the metal gates of the Moon Dormitory. Zero for the most part had no trouble keeping his chunk of the mob under control; he just had to glare at everyone and they quieted themselves, afraid to go beyond this invisible line that his presence marked for them. Kaito on the other side of the walkway was also doing an excellent job, but he was more of charming the students with additional points in Math if they'd behave – it was a known fact that Kaito Takamiya gave exams that not only made your brain bleed, but also shrivel up and die.

"What's so interesting in people in _white_?" Yori was whispering to Yuuki behind him. "Do they know how they just made their laundry life a thousand times difficult?"

"Well, I have to admit they're good-looking and all, but they're still creepy," Yuuki told her friend.

"What did you say, Nakagawa?" one girl yelled.

"Get out of our line, you're blocking our view of Senior Wild!"

"And Idol too!"

"Good god, now they have nicknames for them," Yuuki said in disgust, wrinkling her nose.

"Get lost!"

"Yeah! Get lost!"

Zero put his palm on his face as he whipped around, squared his shoulders and inhaled for another bout of yelling. It was lowly work, keeping a bunch of little girls in check. But he decided long ago that he would cooperate in this, if only to have every opportunity of studying Kaname Kuran, his cohorts, and finding the pureblood's weakness. His goal was never lost on him; Zero would never rest until he found Kuran reduced to ashes.

_Your life for mine, vampire._

"Now listen here, you squealing lot of-!"

"Good evening, Kiryuu. How goes the health check?"

The voice made him freeze where he stood. He hated it, how his senses seemed to jump to full alert whenever Kuran was near or spoke, he _hated_ every damned bit of it. It was the Blood Bond, an ancient power of purebloods. Master and servant were always aware of each other's presence, but never their thoughts. It was akin to a solemn oath with a bloody edge; a servant would forever be compelled by his master's voice, to obey and do as the pureblood bid. If a servant tried to refuse, his own body would kill him for his insolence; he would bleed himself dry until he could no longer heal, and then turn into a pile of ashes. There was no escaping a Blood Bond, only death of the servant, or death of him and his master both. And since nobles and commoner vampires all traced their bloodline to purebloods, every single one was part of a huge network of Blood Bonds. It was the life of the vampire race.

Kaname Kuran was standing behind him. Zero was aware of that, Blood Bond or no. His hunter senses tingled, and the vampire behind him wasn't even baring his fangs yet.

It was also the first time Kuran had showed interest with the Day Class mob. Zero turned around, and found Kuran in front of him, hands slack by his sides. When he'd stop the Night Class stopped walking as well, and from the head of the line Takuma Ichijou went to them to see what was wrong. Zero glared at the dark-haired man in white, who was surveying him with interest.

"You're looking _worn_, are you all right, mister prefect?"

The question seemed innocent enough, but Zero did not miss the bloody joke it hid, as well as the reminder.

Kuran's gaze moved from studying his face to the girl beside him, Yuuki Nakagawa. Yuuki blinked at the sudden attention and hid again behind Zero. Kuran chuckled.

"Kaname, is something wrong?" Ichijou was saying.

"Get back in line," Kuran said softly, but the snap was in his voice. Ichijou Takuma gulped and did as he was told. "Wouldn't do if you got sick, wouldn't it? Seeing as your brother's already had to leave. For now, I mean."

"None of your business," Zero snarled. "_You_ get back in _line_." Bloody Rose was in his school coat, and he did not like the idea of suddenly pulling it out and making the mob more chaotic. At the other side of the walkway Kaito was watching them. Zero did not need to see that Kaito was ready to bring out his weapon if needed.

A faint, amused smile curled on Kuran's lips. He moved, raised his right hand—

Zero caught him by the wrist before he touched anything. From the line of the Night Class he could sense tension rise abruptly.

"Scary," Kaname said in his hushed way of talking. "I was only going to fix your collar."

"I don't need you to do anything for me," Zero snarled.

"Of course. Will you let go now?"

Zero kept his eyes locked into Kuran's crimson as he let the vampire go. Kaname smiled faintly at him and turned, taking the Night Class with him.

"What was that?" said Yuuki from behind him. "You two're behaving like some-!"

But she couldn't finish, as Yori's hand found her mouth before she could get the words out.

* * *

Later that evening, when he was patrolling by one of the balconies of the school building, a few of the Night Class students decided to pay him a visit. He knew their names as much as he knew their faces; the shorter blond guy, Hanabusa Aido also known as Idol; the tall copper-haired guy, Akatsuki Kain also known as Wild and the peach-haired beauty named Ruka Souen. They were also the first three to have paid him any mind when the Night Class came to school, and now they were also the first to go out of the classrooms to see him.

"What do you want?" Zero had asked without bothering to look away from the shadowed treetops of the pine trees that covered the rest of the school grounds. His hands were in his pockets but that was not a problem if a situation presented itself that he needed Bloody Rose out. He prided himself with his lightning reflexes, despite his condition.

"Insolent fool, you ought to be punished," Hanabusa Aido hissed at him.

"You can't expect _things_ like him to know respect," Ruka Souen added.

Zero half-turned and flashed them an insultingly smug smirk. "I don't grovel to do anyone's bidding, is that what's grating your nerves? I might be what I am but I am no _dog_."

Aido's blue eyes made way for red. "Smug little son of a bitch, I'll grant you that. But once you degrade, I'll take delight in hunting you down for Master Kaname."

"Ah, but you're a _coward_," Zero grinned wider. "Why wait for me to degrade? Afraid of a wee little vampire hunter, are you? Want an easy job so your manicure wouldn't be ruined?"

There was movement, and Zero faced Aido completely, a hand in his coat. One shot, there by the forehead. Screw Kaien Cross's ideals. He knew from the beginning this would never work.

However, Akatsuki Kain stepped squarely in his cousin's path.

"What are you doing? Out of the way, Akatsuki!"

Akatsuki stood firm as a mountain, and nodded up toward one of the high windows. Kaname Kuran was looking at the four of them, and though his face was blank, there was a warning in the way he didn't blink. Hanabusa Aido looked like he had been dunked into a frozen lake. Ruka Souen flushed.

"Let's go," she said as she led the way back into the classroom.

_That's the difference between you and me._ Zero thought as he watched the white-clad trio disappear. _I will never grovel. _He turned to the window again but Kuran had left his spot.

* * *

Ichiru was back after four days in the hospital. He wasn't about to return to prefect duties soon, however, and Zero's younger twin looked as sour as a bad grape when he admitted to the truth of the doctor's instructions. He invaded Zero's dorm room with his books and notebooks, and sought to catch up with everything he'd missed in schoolwork until four in the morning, when Zero ushered him away to sleep.

"You just got discharged from the hospital," Zero sighed wearily. "I want you to rest up and sleep. Or do you want to be back there for a longer time? The exams are looming, you wouldn't want to miss _those_."

"Why do I have to be in a dorm room with someone else? You're my brother," Ichiru retorted, arms crossed.

"Ichiru, we've been over this a thousand times."

"It doesn't make sense at all; I say we put a stop to it."

"You can't put a stop to it. Anymore than I do."

Silence settled between the twins. Ichiru shuffled on his feet, looking at Zero.

"You can," he said.

Zero raised an eyebrow.

"Maybe if you asked—!"

The frown slowly crept up Zero's features. His fists clenched tightly until a trickle of blood flowed down his fingertips. After a moment, he loosened the fist and let his fingers relax. The drops of blood fell to the floor, to create a small red pool.

"_Ask_?" he said softly. "Ask for what, Ichiru?"

Ichiru had the decency not to meet his eyes. "The cure, Zero. There's only one cure, and I'm thinking maybe the old oaf did put him in the same place so you two could have a deal, or something."

It had occurred to him too, alongside many likely reasons. The old oaf did indeed have a way of indirectly doing things, but he did them nonetheless. It was also that the other surviving purebloods bore no interest with co-existence. Humans were food, that was it for most of them. Haruka and Juuri Kuran strived for co-existence, but they had died, and now their son, who had once been suspected of their murders, wanted to continue their goal. Co-existence aside, maybe Kaien Cross did plan this from the start, for him.

_If I drink his blood, I won't degrade. I'll be one of them, truly._

But he knew drinking a pureblood's blood had its other edge. It could spare him from reaching Level End, that was true, but a pureblood wasn't given that name for nothing. There was a reason why laws forbade blood tablet companies from processing pure blood for blood tablets.

_It will erode me from inside, until I'm nothing._

"I do not grovel," Zero said, trying hard to keep the anger out of his voice. "And I will not beg for the continuance of my life from the same person who made sure it will end early, do you understand that, Ichiru?"

"I'm just…"

"Get. Out."

Ichiru left.

* * *

Since the arrival of their leader the Night Class was a lot easier to handle. The only problem now was the constant stress that the Day Class mob provided, though for Zero that was no problem at all; a single glare kept the girls and the boys in line. The Night Class still disliked him and he loathed them, and they settled into this sort of uneasy truce by the middle of the school term for that year. They didn't bother Zero, and Zero kept away from them as well.

He observed Kuran for the countless weekday nights after Class Exchange. The man liked to sit himself at the very back of the classroom and observe the class as the instructors lectured. He didn't seem interested in the lessons at all, and what book he brought along wasn't any of the subjects offered to the nightly cohort. But Zero had known Kuran was a very bookish person; even from back then, in the prison cell in the bowels of the Hunter Association. Whatever he was reading Zero did not bother to find out.

_If he isn't interested, why is he here at all?_

That one thought nagged at Zero everyday if he remembered it. Why would Kuran shield himself with many nobles? The school wasn't a school for the Night Class, Zero was sure of it. Kuran was waiting, biding his time for something, all the while building what shield he could. But a shield from what? And Zero had this disturbing idea that somehow he would be caught up in whatever Kuran was waiting for. He hated it, this bloody chess game these purebloods played with one another. If they wanted to kill each other so badly, why don't they just meet each other in an empty field and bite? Another question was who was on the other side of Kuran's chessboard?

He glanced into the window of the classroom, silently checking each Night Class student present. Ichijou Takuma, Hanabusa Aido, Ruka Souen, Akatsuki Kain…mentally Zero ticked off the names as he matched them to faces. The Night Class numbers had doubled since the initial arrival, as many young nobles flocked to Kuran's presence like moths drawn to a fire. Now they had a maximum of eighty students, all from noble families each.

_Wait._

Kuran wasn't in the classroom, but Seiren was there. Zero had often wondered who Seiren was; she liked to follow Kuran too like the rest of the Night Class, but it was a different kind of following, not the simpering, ingratiating way that Aido and the others did. Seiren followed Kuran the same way a loyal guard followed a master. She wasn't there to curry favor or bask in his graces, no. And sometimes Zero wondered, was she the same as him? Was she once a human girl too, whom Kuran turned for some unknown plan, and hence found herself this way?

But Kuran was cutting classes tonight, and Zero could not let that pass. He jumped from the balcony and landed soundlessly on the grass, and walked into the pine forest. He braced himself, wondering if he should have called Ichiru or Kaito to go with him. He did not want a repeat of that evening when Kuran arrived; he had been so helpless and bound by the Blood Bond. But calling for help meant admitting weakness, and Kuran might find that amusing. Zero shunned weakness the moment he woke up transformed and told Kaito to take him away from his own family.

He would not be as weak this time.

He went around the pine forest that surrounded the classrooms building first, but found no trace of Kuran there. Then Zero went for a wider perimeter for his search, almost reaching the middle school grounds. He'd been careful to look at the corners of the silent buildings. Where was Kuran? Had he left campus?

Zero stopped walking, thinking, Bloody Rose in hand. He closed his eyes and focused at that tiny presence at the very back of his mind, that tiny unwanted intrusion he'd had there since he had been thirteen. He focused on it, trying to locate it, trying to pin it down on this invisible map he had of the school grounds. But the presence wasn't there, so he decided to widen his map…

_He's by the town? What..?_

Zero was already walking. His job as a prefect began and ended in the school campus, and when he left Cross Academy's walls he was now doing his job as a hunter. If Kuran was up to some funny business, all Zero needed was a valid excuse. But he could not be careless, and so close to human habitation too. Zero knew the guy was cunning and cautious. Did he cut classes just to admire the neon lights of the shops downtown? That was absurd.

He'd found Kuran sitting by one of the town's fountains, clad in an elegant coal-gray trench coat. He was sitting by the fountain edge clutching a cup of coffee, and looking up at the flashy billboards and shop signs that flickered and glimmered around them. Zero felt a moment of hesitation, but he approached anyway, the presence at the back of his head growing with each step.

"Better get back to campus," he said as he stood beside Kuran.

Kuran's attention was locked to the nearby cinema's billboard of the current feature film.

"Are you listening? You're not to cut classes," Zero scowled.

"Do you like movies, Zero?" Kuran answered.

The question was totally unexpected. Despite himself (and still scowling), Zero looked at the film's advertisement. Some war movie, it seemed to him.

"Not interested," he replied. "Look here, the Night Class—."

"Can survive without my presence for tonight, I'm sure. Didn't they do well already for a week before I got here?"

Zero's frown deepened. He had Bloody Rose in his pocket, though he had never let go of it. _I could shoot him here. A bullet to the heart._

Kuran turned to look at him and offered him the coffee. "Coffee? I haven't touched it."

"I don't accept coffee from monsters," Zero replied bluntly.

"How cold," Kaname replied as he stood up. "Follow."

He walked off, and Zero snarled to himself. So much for cutting classes, now he was being forced to abandon his duties as well – and for what? He didn't goddamn know!

Kuran traversed the streets with the air of someone who had been here lots of times before. He led them from the town's heart and to the industrial zone, where big blank warehouses stood beside each other. Streetlights were fewer down in this district. Overhead, stars twinkled faintly from whatever gap the clouds left for them. Zero could smell the rain approaching.

"Can you sense him?" Kuran spoke up suddenly.

Sense? Sense what? But Zero could sense something. It was a presence familiar to him like the back of his own hand. He could sense its fangs bared at them from where it hid itself, and it was much more interested in Kuran than he was. But it wasn't alone, Zero realized. One…two…three…four? What were those things doing here, and in such numbers?

Zero drew his gun from his pocket. "Why are…!"

Kuran was nowhere to be seen. Zero bit back a curse as the first of the four Level E's showed itself, jumping from one of the warehouse roofs, right toward him. Zero did not feel fear, nor panic. He stood his ground, aimed, and fired. There was a flash of light as his bullet hit the Level E's forehead. It had been a woman once upon a time, and it gave such an earsplitting scream as the bullet did its job, and when it died it was nothing but a pile of ashes.

The two others came quickly after the death of their comrade; one from behind a nearby alley, and another had been clinging from one streetlamp that didn't light up. Zero whirled around, calm. Two fires, two bullets. One to the forehead and one to the heart, and the Level E's were ash before they got there.

One more left, and where was it?

"Tsk," Zero hissed as he walked past blank warehouses. He soon reached an intersection, abandoned as the rest of the area. The lone stop light hanging above the road flickered orange, but never shifted to green nor red. "Kuran!" he shouted. "This stupid game of yours has to stop!"

He whipped around and saw a child. The child couldn't have been more than eight, Zero was sure, and her eyes were red. Dried blood caked her mouth and her dress, and she couldn't have degenerated more than a day past. He still saw a flicker of intelligence in her eyes as she approached.

_I would be like her soon. And then I'll…_

He raised Bloody Rose again and fired. Above, the stop light still flickered, _orange, orange, orange._

"Kuran!" he called again.

"Not so loud, I can hear you."

And there he was, standing there with arms folded, leaning against a streetlamp. Zero did not put Bloody Rose down but aimed at Kuran now.

There was nothing but calmness in the vampire's ageless face. He straightened himself and watched Zero with interest.

"Strong, that's what you are," Kaname spoke. "But you're also degrading. How many blood tablets have you been eating per hour?"

_Of course he knows,_ Zero told himself as he prepared to shoot. _But I won't give him the answer._

He fired, but before the bullets could hit, Kuran dissolved into a thousand shrieking black bats. The flurry went right at him, biting and scratching and shrieking in his ears, and for a moment there was chaos, but Zero retained his calmness. He fired and fired, hitting one, two, three, four…ten bats before he'd had to quickly reload.

As always, Kuran proved to be the master of taking advantage of the smallest distractions.

Zero wasn't sure where the scythe blade came from, but there it was, a flash under the orange flicker of the stoplight. Pain, a different kind of pain seared his being as the scythe blade cut deep into his shoulder. He had never wanted to be under the business end of an anti-vampire weapon, but the pain bit sharp and deep, different from any he had tasted before. His blood came forth in a great red torrent, and he had fallen onto his knees, and his ammo lay a few feet from his reach. His shoulder was a big great bleeding gap, and his eyes made way for red.

The scythe was taller than Kuran Kaname by a head, and he held it one-handed and bare. But the weapon did not harm his fingers, nor his hand, and Zero knew this had to be a sick joke.

"Your healing is gone, but I did not touch your heart. You will be fine, but the thirst will overcome your mind," Kaname spoke. "The bite of a hunter weapon is painful. I made sure of that when I made them."

_Made them? What is he-? It was that woman who made them—_

He clutched at his ruined shoulder, his breath coming out in gasps. His throat burned, and he let out an inhuman snarl.

_No! I can't end like this!_

Kuran was on one knee, and opening his coat. He had not bothered to wear the Night Class uniform tonight, and somehow Zero realized that this too, had been planned. And he played into it like a brainless bastard, when would he ever learn?

"I can't let you degenerate just yet."

The scent of pure blood drowned out everything else in a red haze.

"Drink."

_No-! I won't! I will not-! I WILL NOT YIELD!_

But the vampire in him was stronger than whatever resolve he'd ever had, and he jumped at Kuran with monstrous eagerness, and bit hard and deep down into that exposed pale neck. The blood came out thick and gushing, and he drank hard, all of it, every drop, he wanted it, he needed it, he _wanted_ it, he'd die for it.

_So sick, this desire for blood._


	4. Chapter 4

**.04**

He could remember how Ichiru had informed him of it. It was by the school ball that marked the end of the first half of the school term for that year, and he had been outside the dance hall, not really wanting anything to do with the dancing inside. He liked the balmy evening with its soft caressing breeze, and he stood by the porch with hands in his pockets, admiring the stars. He'd sensed Ichiru even before his twin drew level with him. Unlike him, Ichiru had always looked forward to term-end balls, and he dressed himself up to match. Zero had remained in the school uniform and made do by tucking a rose in his breast pocket.

"We have one Night Class student missing," Ichiru had said. "Senri Shiki."

From the records, Shiki had filed for a two-day leave stating a photo shoot in Argentine as an excuse. However, Rima Tohya had returned from said shoot, but Shiki didn't. He had been AWOL from classes now for a week, and it looked like Kaname Kuran wasn't doing something about it. Zero discounted the fact that they were cousins for the delay, for some reason, blood ties simply wasn't reason enough for this. Kuran was a disciplinarian with his class even if he himself slacked off sometimes and cut classes. Zero wondered what could be holding up the other vampire.

"Probably family matters," Ichiru told him. For a moment his twin forgot about the ball and stood beside him closely as they discussed the topic. "It's a known fact his mother is mentally unstable, and their fortunes are being stretched with some things. Maybe the mother fired the servants and he's busy hiring."

Zero saw the sense in that and nodded. "If he doesn't come back within the month, we'll have to contact his uncle, or something."

"Got it."

Ichiru took a step back and looked at him. Zero raised an eyebrow at the scrutiny.

"What?" he'd said.

"You look different somehow," Ichiru said, tilting his head.

"What do you mean?"

"You look a lot better for the first time in years, Zero. Did something happen?" Ichiru grinned and playfully punched him by the shoulder. "Did you finally say yes to Nadeshiko Shindo? Are you two officially a couple now?"

Nadeshiko Shindo had been a classmate of theirs since middle school, like Yori and Yuuki. For some reason she was another exception to the rule – she had a terrible crush on him and didn't miss a chance to give him chocolates every White Day or try asking him to dance every end-of-term ball. Zero thought Shindo was an okay girl; she wasn't flat like Nakagawa, and he supposed she could be considered cute in some aspects. But he had never really had relationships with a girl, there were so many things that…well, Kuran had left him too scarred for any relationship. He doubted he would start courting or dating a girl anytime soon.

"No," Zero replied, turning his gaze back to the stars.

"Really, Zero, would it hurt you to try date someone?" Ichiru smiled and sat on the balcony railing. "You just gotta stop frowning and try not to shout for a day, see?"

"What would the girl do I wonder, if I ask her for a bit of blood?" The words came out without much thought on Zero's part. "Would she consider that as a turn-on if I bite her suddenly during sex?"

"Well then…try dating a girl…with…erm…" Ichiru shrugged. "You don't hate _all_ of them, right?"

"No, I don't," Zero admitted. "But I find I can't trust them either. And I've got one person to blame."

Out of the corner of his vision, the same person was standing quietly by a shaded corner of an adjacent balcony. Kuran had not bothered to dress in a tux; he retained his perfect Night Class uniform and had spirited himself away to hide after giving the opening remarks for the ball earlier. He had been doing nothing, as far as Zero knew, he just sat there by the railing of his own balcony, hands on his knees and watching the dancing students inside with a distant, disinterested expression.

_I don't hate them. But I can't trust them._

Kuran sensed that he was being stared at and met Zero's gaze. The pureblood managed a faint smile before getting to his feet and surprisingly heading back into the dance hall.

Vampires…Zero wouldn't hesitate to admit that he still felt a big deal of anger toward his _master_. Never mind that Kuran gave him his own blood to spare him from falling into the End; if that was some sort of apology, Zero did not appreciate all the scheming and injury that went along with it.

_Is that what I'm looking for? An apology?_

But no amount of sorry could turn him back into human. No amount of sorry would make Ichiru nor his parents stop aging. His parents could die after old age or be killed in one hunt; Ichiru would wither away and die. He would linger on; while others around him faded away with each step he took. He would have too much time in his hands…C-class vampires did not have the longevity of nobles and purebloods, but they could live for hundreds of years. That was what Kuran gave him – the prospect of many years, unchanging and alone.

_I wonder how it is, for him._

Kuran now found himself chatting lightly with some Day Class girls. They positively glowed and flushed when the Night Class president joined their little huddle. One girl looked like she didn't know what to do – whether she'd like to hug Kuran or faint where she stood. Kuran smiled and walked on, to stop beside Yori and Yuuki, who were picking food from the buffet. Zero watched; Yori looked unappreciative of the sudden attention of the Night Class president while Yuuki wondered if Kuran had finally lost it because he talked to them.

_Thousands of years, and everything else passes by in a blur. _

Purebloods committing suicide was no real news for the hunter and vampire society. Only, Zero hoped the damn beasts stop scheming too much when they were planning how they'd like to go down. If they wanted to die, all they had to do was knock at the association doors and ask a hunter to chop their heads off, or something. But somehow the damn vampires overcomplicated things and he couldn't understand it. He was a victim of that over complication. It was not a pretty or funny thing.

Kuran was saying something to Yori and Yuuki. The two girls exchanged puzzled looks, and Yori resolutely shook her head and turned her back to Kuran, and walked to their table. Yuuki looked flustered and was now trying to make amends. This led to her accepting a dance with Kuran.

"Oh boy," Ichiru was saying. "The Kaname fan club will not let her live this down."

Zero leaned by the balcony railings, letting his weight settle on his elbows. He watched Yuuki and Kuran, the girl in pale pink and the guy in white as they moved to the dance floor for the next waltz.

_Sick of all the schemes. _

It was odd that he should remember Kuran in that prison cell. He had changed into a fresh white dress shirt and a pair of black slacks. He was watching him and Kaito play cards while he sat at the far end of the cell, his wrists chained. He'd always watched in silence. It was almost an odd sight to have a beautiful young boy in chains and in prison. It was Zero whom he had spoken to after a while. He'd finished Hamlet and King Lear, and asked Zero for a book on world mythology. Zero informed Kaito of the request and sent him to get a copy of the book. Zero could remember ending up buying a book for Kuran, as the hunter library did not have a book on world mythologies.

_Was he doing all these things because he had been bored?_

The dryness of his throat came suddenly and surprised him. He raised a hand to his throat, and worried that Ichiru might notice, Zero pretended to be fixing his neck tie. His eyes were still locked onto Yuuki and Kuran, dancing. His thirst decided to up itself a notch. His throat ached, and he swallowed painfully. He could feel his fangs out.

"Zero? You okay?"

"Will you get me a glass of water?"

"Sure. Wait for me."

_I want his blood._

The thought came unbidden, and shocked him. Along with that lone idea others came to follow it. Blood. Hot, thick blood, and Zero had all of it at his disposal, with the stop light still flickering orange above their heads. He had never bitten anyone since his attack on Kaito, and even then he hadn't been aware. Kuran never struggled against him, even as they both fell into a clumsy heap on the road. Zero drank and drank, and Kuran never showed a hint of fear that Zero might drink him dry.

_Stop,_ he'd said, and Zero stopped and disentangled himself from Kuran, his breath in ragged gasps, his mouth and neck and clothes stained with blood. Kuran gathered his composure and sat up on the street, clutching his wounded neck. They stared at each other for a while. Kuran's scythe was lying on the ground, for a moment forgotten. Zero's blood had already dried on its blade.

_You better spend the night in a motel,_ Kuran had told him. _Wash off the scent and the blood._

Zero took a deep breath and found stillness inside him. His eyes were still on his master, who had now gotten to his feet, but wobbled. It was the first time he had seen a pureblood looking close to fainting.

Kuran bent to pick up his scythe, and Zero had watched as he retracted it and tucked it inside his coat. There must have been the question in his eyes, because Kuran allowed himself a small chuckle and did something he had never done before – explained.

_The weapons will not hurt me. I made them. They remember me._

Zero got to his feet too, and wiped the thick blood from his mouth with his sleeve. He felt…light. He felt better than he had in four years – he even felt…normal. No headache haunted him now. No restlessness, no instability…no fear that he might suddenly grab the nearest person and bite. There was stillness, and he was struck dumb by the peace of it.

_I want…_

He left the balcony and went to the washroom and locked himself up in one of the silent cubicles. He sat down on the toilet cover, hands on his knees, his head bowed, his eyes closed.

* * *

The Sun Dorms were a-flurry with activity. Students were packing for the vacation. It was one of those rare times that Zero's door was open. Ichiru was inside with him, tossing clothes into an open backpack. Zero was sitting by the window sill, clutching his blood tablet case as he watched his twin move around.

"Too bad mom and dad are away on a hunt," Ichiru was saying. "Ah well, at least we'd have the house to ourselves. They'll be happy you're actually going home with me this time."

"I'm sure," Zero replied.

It was the first time in four years that he allowed himself to go home to his family for a real vacation. In the past Zero had always went to the hunter association first, and would only go spend time with his parents and brother during the last week of vacation.

_Things are different now. I'm no longer afraid that I'll hurt them._

After they've packed, they went with Kaito and Kaien Cross to the Moon Dormitory grounds. The Night Class students were outside and sporting umbrellas and tugging their luggage along. Takuma Ichijou beamed at him and Ichiru as they approached.

"I'll follow up on Shiki," Ichijou was telling Kaien and Kaito as he bowed over and over. "I'm so sorry—."

"Here, the Moon Dorm keys."

Kuran was already there too, and was handing an envelope to Kaien Cross. Zero glanced at the pureblood, wondering where he'd spend his vacation.

_Maybe in some manor by a secluded mountainside._

The journey home with Ichiru was uneventful. They took the world train, and the trip lasted eight hours. The house was empty but there was food in the fridge, and their mother left a note for Ichiru saying they'd be back in a week. After unpacking and a restful nap, Ichiru wasted no time dragging his brother around town, taking him to the arcades and the movies and restaurants. Zero obliged his twin and let himself be dragged about, actually enjoying vacation this time.

The best part was when their parents rang the doorbell, and Zero opened the door for them with a smile. Their mother burst into tears as she wrapped her arms around him, and Zero held her close and quietly, never mind her tears wetting his shirt. Their father only smiled, and Zero smiled back – that was all he needed to do and his father somehow understood.

Hunt orders came to him too, and Ichiru complained that the association should give him a break. But Zero dutifully read the instructions and took a good look at the target's picture, and then he would wear his coat and tuck Bloody Rose safely, and go on his way. He was still vampire hunter after all. Above else, he was still Zero Kiryuu.

Sometimes he would be gone for days or weeks, and when he got back his mother would always cook up a feast of salt-broth ramen just for him and feed him until he was fit to burst.

There were times when the thoughts still came to him, and Zero would stay awake in his room, looking up at the dark ceiling. Hunters also aged slowly, but age they still did. He would age slower than any hunter save Kaien Cross, he was sure of it. The prospect of those years wouldn't let his mind rest easy, and he would curl up under the blanket and try to sleep everything away.

There were times too that Kaname Kuran would be the subject of his thinking, and Zero would somehow wonder where the bastard was or what he was up to. But his thoughts, though still angry, weren't as violent as before. He hated it, however, because thinking of Kuran would make his throat go dry, and he would remember the thick, red blood and he would crave for it. He would reach for his blood tablets then and pop four into his mouth, and then look for whatever it was to occupy his mind with.

_I don't need him to bugger me every time. I don't._

* * *

Zero decided to end vacation a week early for himself, and went back to Cross Academy alone. As prefect he also had jobs to tend to in the campus, and it involved checking the facilities of the Moon Dormitory and reviewing the roster of students. He was in Kaien Cross's office looking over the lists when his eye caught the detail that Takuma Ichijou would be late returning from the break. He glanced down the names and found that Senri Shiki had at least called, but informed the school he would be returning with Ichijou.

He loved the fact that he had seven days of the Sun Dorms to himself. Zero had always been a person to revel in silence – he liked his peace and quiet. He would go to the Moon Dorm and organize things with their lively maid, a C-class bespectacled lady that he surprisingly went along well with. Unlike the snots of nobles that made up the Night Class, the maid had never insulted him since the start of the Night Class. She also sent him, Ichiru and Kaito regular good-tasting muffins, and knew respect unlike her superiors. That made her tolerable in Zero's eyes.

* * *

He supposed he wasn't surprised when he returned from town one evening after a dinner of ramen to find the topmost windows of the Moon Dorms alight. He knew who had arrived without needing to check; Kaname Kuran always ended his vacation early and went back to campus with Seiren ahead of the Night Class students. For a moment Zero considered, and found himself walking toward the doors of the Moon Dorm. A few steps from the porch and he stopped, hands in his pockets.

_Why am I here?_

He was thirsty again. His throat was dry, and he'd left his blood tablets in his dorm room. He should get out before his thirst decided to play him for a fool once more.

_I should not forget my goal. _

_I must not forget._

"Ah, it's Kiryuu."

Kuran was standing by the doorway, the light from within the dorms casting shadows to hide his features in shadow. But the red pinpricks that were his eyes were perfectly visible. As always, the man was clad in a black shirt and matching gray pants.

Zero looked at the pureblood for a moment, by now used to his senses sharpening whenever his master was very near. It still annoyed him and made him feel like a servant. There were questions. Too many.

"Why?" was all he said, eyes meeting Kuran's. "Why are you in this school?"

He wasn't expecting an answer. Truth be told he didn't know why he asked the question, and why that certain question out of all the others. He could have asked why he got bitten. What was his purpose in Kuran's unknown plan. Or he could have pulled Bloody Rose and killed his master, the threat of the Blood Bond or no. He could have done all of those things, and instead he asked the question that couldn't be answered.

Kuran's hand fell away from the doorknob. "I am fulfilling a request from a person who earned some of my respect."

He stared at Kuran. Not only did he get an answer, but it seemed it was a truth. But he knew better than to take anything a pureblood said at first blush. And the answer did not really answer anything at all.

"Then, Kiryuu, why are you in this school?" Kuran asked now.

"You must know the answer," Zero replied.

Kuran let himself a small laugh. "I guess I do."

"What are you waiting for?" Zero said, pushing his luck a bit more.

That one, he got no answer.

_And here I thought he could tell the truth._

Zero tsk'd and turned to walk away.

"Haruka and Juuri had a daughter," Kuran spoke up suddenly. "They loved her so much, they raised her in a basement for most of her life."

_What?_ Zero stopped on his tracks and half-turned back, watching Kuran. The shadows hid much of his face, damn him.

"I never quite agreed with their way of handling the problem," Kuran continued. "But I am in no place to question them. They wished to keep her safe from their brother, who had been erased from our family tree."

_Rido? _In his mind, Zero was quickly scrambling to piece together what Kaname was telling him. He remembered again, that day they brought him in, chained. _Suspected of killing his mother and father, and reduced his uncle to bloody bits._

"Juuri wished to provide her daughter with a different life, and thus sacrificed her own to turn her daughter human. Haruka had gone to fight his brother in a one-on-one battle, but Rido had always been one to shit on honor, and took a hunter sword to the fight. Haruka did not stand a chance."

_Caught with his uncle's sword, and standing over what remained of him, all those great bloody pieces._

"I left their daughter to a human family who knew nothing of vampires, and who could most provide her with a different life. But Haruka and Juuri's brother will try to get her soon."

_Danger to the school?_

"And that is what I'm waiting for, Zero Kiryuu. The opportunity to take that person down, even if it means placing myself directly in his path, with the unsuspecting human girl for bait, to boot."

_Bait? Then where do I…_

"And that places me where?" He voiced the question anyway. He felt his chest tighten at the mention of it, dreading the answer. _If he gives me a wrong answer…_ what then? What would he do?

"You were never part of any plan," Kaname said. "And yet…"

He decided he didn't need to hear the rest of it. His fist found Kuran's ageless face, and he put all of the strength he had in that blow, and in the next, and the next, and the next one after that.

_I was nothing but a toy. A momentary distraction, an amusement that happened to cross his path. I was nothing to him. He took my life from me and put himself in the center of that void, and yet he tells me that didn't matter, nothing ever matters for monsters like him; it's all a bloody game he plays to rid himself of the boredom and put purpose in his own pathetic unending life._

He couldn't feel his fingers with the pain, and his knuckles had taken wounds. He could not recall when he'd stopped, just that he was lying down on the floor of the Moon Dormitory, looking up at the chandelier above him with eyes half-blinded and choked by salty tears.

_I was nothing to him._

The answer was something he hadn't counted on, and the why of his asking the question another. It was the first time he had dared to face the truth he wouldn't name.

_Purpose…_

_All I wanted was the purpose to keep going._

_And he just—_

"I hate people who don't ever let someone finish what he has to say…" Kuran muttered beside him in a hoarse voice. "They never give you a chance, not at all, sir, oh no…"

The pureblood started to laugh. His laughter echoed against Zero's ears. When he opened his eyes he found Kuran peering down at him, blood still clinging onto where the wounds were. Damn their insane healing rate. Zero would have wanted to see his face all mashed up and blackened, even for just a moment.

Kuran swooped down, and the bite came sudden, but the pain was brief, to be quickly replaced with a tolerable sting. He bit exactly where he had bitten four years ago, right where the cross brand was burned onto Zero's skin. He drew the blood with care, never spilling a drop, unlike Zero's clumsy and messy way of feeding.

He drew a total of three mouthfuls of blood, enough to make Zero lightheaded. When he drew back he rested his forehead against Zero's, and up close, Zero realized Kuran's eyes were a natural red, even if he was not hungry.

"I'll still kill you at the end of the day," Zero hissed faintly. He didn't move for the fear that nausea would suddenly strike at him if he decided to sit up.

"How apt," Kaname replied quietly, and it started with a brush of the lips, and then he pushed forward in a bloody kiss.

_What am I doing?_

_I don't know anymore._

* * *

This time, Ichiru was with him as the school clocks tolled six in the evening, and the Moon Dormitory gates creaked open. The girls went wild, as always, and the boys waved their tarpaulin banners above practiced cheers, and he sighed and prepared for the long haul. School had officially resumed.

Zero turned to his cluster of girls and glowered at them all, and they quivered in fear yet answered him with taunts and pointing fingers just the same. Shindo was there and was being squeezed by the other girls around her, and she opened her mouth and looked like she wanted to say something, but her words were drowned when someone shouted Senri Shiki's name.

_So he's back,_ Zero thought as he turned to see, and see Senri Shiki he did, because Shiki led the Night Class that evening, standing proud at the head of the procession, hands in his pockets, his eyes mismatched red and blue. It was so unlike the sleepy Shiki that lagged behind the class, this one was different, and his mismatched eyes took in the lively throng of human girls and boys, and a pink tongue darted out of his lips and licked the tips of his fangs, as if in anticipation.

Kaname was not at the back of the line.


	5. Chapter 5

**.05**

He could remember the soft tapping on the glass, a sound gentle enough to be heard by his vampire senses. They came regularly, _tap, tap, tap_, with an interval of about three seconds in between each tap. Zero's eyes slowly opened in the darkness, and it wasn't really dark in his eyes. The room was just a bit shadowed, that was it, and in a moment of sleepy confusion he glanced at the digital clock by his bedside table.

_3:02 a.m._

_Tap, tap, tap._

He sat up in bed and turned to the curtained window where the infernal tapping was coming from. Shirtless and clad only in a pale gray pair of drawstring pants, Zero rose from bed and jerked the curtains open. He found himself staring.

It had started snowing a fortnight ago, and soft snowflakes still rained idly from the dark sky. There had been no stars that evening, and even now. By his window Kaname Kuran sat crouching by the window sill, dried blood clinging to the side of his neck and his wrist. For a moment sleepiness and confusion did not let Zero do anything. But shaking his head, he opened the window latch and stepped back. Kuran shivered lightly; there were snowflakes clinging to his hair, and he made himself comfortable by sitting outright by Zero's window. There was a dark, dried bloodstain on the area of his left collar.

"I was starting to think you do sleep like the dead," Kaname told him as he shifted. "My fingers were starting to freeze."

"What are you…?" Zero began, but the question died before he could finish it. This was so strange he couldn't even begin to wrap his mind around it completely. Kaname had never visited him before. For a moment Zero remembered the kiss, and he wondered if Kaname now got it into his head that just because of that he could go bother him at such godforsaken hours. But that thought aside, Kaname looked close to fainting again and possibly paler, and Zero's eyes lingered on the healed bite marks. He was fed on. Kaname Kuran had just bled recently, but for whom?

"Don't concern yourself with my wounds," Kaname said, and he hid his wrist from view and pulled his bloodstained collar a bit higher. "I come to give you a warning."

A frown made itself known on Zero's face, but he didn't say anything. He gave a tiny nod to show Kaname he could start talking.

"There will be a fighting in the school grounds soon," Kaname explained slowly as he clasped his hands together. "Do everything in your power to keep the Day Class students inside their dormitories."

_What?_

"There will be hunters also," Kaname continued. "But they will try to get you out of the way."

"Why are you telling me this?" Zero spoke up. "And why would other hunters try to do away with me? I have never disobeyed our laws nor forsaken our vows."

"Snakes can be found in all kinds of forests," Kaname replied, raising a hand and touching Zero's lower lip with a finger.

"What will happen?" Zero asked, feeling the finger tracing the contours of his mouth.

"Kaien Cross will not do nothing this time, I guarantee that to you," Kaname was talking again, ignoring Zero's question. "And I trust you four will make do, yes, even your younger brother. He's setting his own plans into motion and I am despicably powerless to stop him, until the crucial moment…"

Zero's hand closed in around Kaname's wrist. Dried blood was still blood, and in the darkness of his room, Zero's eyes glowed red. Kaname stopped what he was doing and watched with parted lips as Zero bit down into the recently-healed bite mark.

He held Kaname's wrist almost tenderly, and he drank the thick blood in gulps. He still had to learn Kuran's no-mess way of feeding. When Zero stopped, Kaname was already leaning against the window frame, looking weaker.

"My heart strains," he said quietly. "It has been a long time since I have been drained this far."

Zero licked the blood off Kaname's healing wrist with relish.

_His blood is all I want. _

"You never answer questions, don't you?" Zero said. "What's happening? You can't expect me to do things without knowing why I have to do them."

"A pureblood cannot survive if he explains everything he does," Kaname answered.

"Must you always be scheming something, then?" Zero frowned.

"For a life so long, finding purpose is the only way I can continue waking."

Zero opened his mouth to argue, but Kaname tapped a finger onto his lips to silence him. A fleeting thought occurred to Zero to bite down on the offending finger and suckle blood off of it, like a hungry cat. But he held his ground and sullenly kept quiet.

"Are you listening? Keep the day class students in. The noble students will help you," Kaname looked mildly irritated now. "He must not get to the girl. And I'll do my part on that."

"Who is the girl we're talking about here? There are almost a hundred day class girls," Zero replied.

"So simple a thing, and so easily missed," Kaname let himself chuckle. "She looks a lot like me; the resemblance is almost uncanny, and disturbing."

And then Zero knew who Kaname was referring to. His eyes widened in shock of the realization. _That girl is a…_

"Who are you trying to kill?" Zero asked. "Who is it, that you had to let yourself be captured by the hunter association to try get Bloody Rose?"

Kaname looked at him, surprised. And then the pureblood smiled.

"Ah, he has a sharp mind after all," Kaname murmured.

"I'm not stupid," Zero hissed softly. "Answer the goddamn question."

"My master," Kaname spread out his hands. "I will try to do what no vampire has done before. Break the Blood Bond and kill my way to freedom."

* * *

He had wondered how to tell Kaito and Ichiru about the information Kaname had given him without arousing their suspicions. Zero sat in his seat, the teacher's lecture on Physics not really reaching his mind as he tapped his pen absently onto his textbook. He knew he could not be careless on the secrets Kaname had passed on to him; one wrong word and his parents might be caught up in whatever trouble it was brewing inside the association. And Kaito and Ichiru knew he wasn't one to actually meddle with the association politics, and this information was definitely something very political, something with the higher-ups. If Kaito asked him how he had come to know such information…

He had not yet told anybody about his ties with Kaname Kuran. And he preferred it that way, because in himself, Zero was still not accepting the oddity of it all. Ichiru would probably die from a heart attack if he knew his older brother kissed another guy. And the one who turned him vampire, to boot.

"I thought you were taking notes," Yuuki Nakagawa hissed faintly beside him.

Zero turned to the petite, auburn-haired girl. "Why the hell do I have to take notes?"

"I'll copy from you!"

"Take your own goddamn notes, you lazy flatlands!"

She'd answered him with a painful jab of her pen into his side, making him yelp. The teacher's lecture was interrupted, and the man frowned severely at the two of them from where he stood. Zero tsk'd irritably and ducked his head low, pretending to read his Physics textbook. Beside him, Yuuki was trying to do the same.

"Nakagawa! Since you look like you've studied enough by the way you're not minding our lecture, maybe you can answer problem six for us," said the teacher.

Yuuki looked like her parents had just cancelled her allowance for the entire school term. She rose, weak-kneed, and went to the board looking like she was heading for the gallows. It was a well-known fact that Yuuki was at the bottom of the class, and had always scraped by for her grades most of her life. Zero watched her struggle with her solution by the board.

_Does she know? Somewhere inside her, does a small part of her remember?_

He wondered how that would be for him, if he'd be in the same situation. He would live the rest of his life in a lie, but he would live it in peace, with only the common joys and sorrows the world had to offer. He would not know the thirst, or be caught up in the complicated web of vampire politics. He would not be forced to go to night soirees with nobles looking at him like he was a tasty morsel every time he passed. He would not live too long, the years dragging by with nothing new to offer, and he would stew in his boredom, and create his own destruction with having too much time in his hands.

_In the end, she's luckier than the brother she doesn't remember._

Yuuki was now scratching her cheek as the teacher preached about good students diligently studying for their subjects and not just teasing their seatmates.

_But then…her parents should have at least respected her enough to give her time so that she may decide what's to become of her, herself. _

If Zero was in her shoes, and if he was given the chance to remember, he knew he would not forgive his parents for what they did. Even if they excused it off for love of him or a desire of a different future for him, the fact remained that they never acknowledged his own will to live his life the way he wanted it.

_And if I can't live on my own terms, I am not alive at all._

* * *

It came to him in a black envelope sealed with the insignia of the president of the association. If Kaname had not warned him, he was sure he would pack up a month's worth of clothes, file for a leave with the school and go to the headquarters wondering what the matter was. And he knew the moment he stepped in the building, there would be no going out for him for an indefinite time, until whatever was going to happen, had happened. Zero did not bother opening the envelope; he just clutched it as he sat on his bed. He weighed his options carefully, thinking about the choices he could make and their possible consequences.

On his desk, the digital clock shifted from 4:59 to 5:00 in the afternoon. Zero left the sealed envelope on his pillow as he rose and picked up his school coat. He made his way to the school grounds by the Moon Dorm gates, and soon after Ichiru was there too. Zero glanced thoughtfully at his brother.

"Did you get any memo from the HQ lately?"

Ichiru blinked at him. "No? Why?"

"Ah, nothing."

_So they're really trying to keep me away._

Ichiru was frowning at something behind him. Zero turned and found Senri Shiki leaning by the closed iron gates of the Moon Dorm, hands in his pockets, mismatched eyes looking at them.

"Class Exchange isn't until an hour later," Ichiru was saying. "Is something the matter?"

"I can see why," Senri smirked, as he looked at Zero.

"If you're going to say something, say it," Zero replied. "If not, I suggest shutting the fuck up and getting back inside the gates."

Still smirking, Senri went back inside the Moon Dorm walls. Zero remembered Kaname's words.

_I will try to do what no vampire has done before. Break the Blood Bond and kill my way to freedom._

* * *

Things started moving like the cogwheels of a machine that one winter day Yagari Toga arrived at the Cross Academy with an order to put Zero under protective custody. Winter was starting to get bad by that time, and two weeks prior saw four cancelled classes because of hailstorms and a blizzard. Zero was wearing the school trench coat and waiting for Class Exchange when Kaito arrived and told him their mentor was there in the headmaster's office and wanted to see him. Ichiru did not follow him, and when Zero arrived at the room, Toga unceremoniously thrust the order under his student's nose.

"What did you do this time?" Yagari Toga demanded. "The president sent you eight summons and you didn't respond to any one, and now this!"

"I don't know what I did, master," Zero replied. "But what I know is I'm sensing lots of vampires heading this way."

Even before he got bitten, Zero's hunter senses were already refined. Changing had only seen his abilities heightened, and even Yagari Toga knew better to doubt his own student's hunter abilities.

"How many?" Kaien Cross was already moving and had his wrapped and sheathed hunter sword out.

"I don't know. But the Sun Dorms have to be secured," Zero said, looking at his master.

_Make sure he does not get to the girl_, that was what Kaname told him.

"I don't know what's happening too, but you're staying here," Toga said as he took out a specialized manacle for vampires and clasped the other end to Zero's left wrist, and the other end to one of the chairs in front of Kaien's office desk. Muttering a few spells Toga reinforced the chair and made sure it wouldn't break, or get dragged out the room. "We'll see what this is about. Your parents, uncles and aunts are all under surveillance too, I don't really know what's going on anymore – sometimes field missions have its disadvantages."

Zero sat down in silence as his master and Kaien Cross hurriedly left.

The hours seemed to trickle by in a pace worse than a snail's. As the drab, gray morning made way for the sickly orange of afternoon, Zero's senses could detect almost a hundred D-class and C-class vampires now surrounding the school. By early evening a boom sounded from where the Moon Dormitory would be located, and vampires bared their fangs, and hunters joined the fray too, though Zero knew which side they were on. All the while Zero remained seated, chained to the reinforced chair. He focused his thoughts onto that presence at the back of his mind, so close and yet so far, and he could feel the presence straining with all its might – it seemed to quiver at the recesses of his thoughts, like an angry little thing wanting to burst out of whatever's binding it.

From the fuzzy view that the curtains afforded, Zero saw clearly as a vampire kicked a burning body off the roof of the Sun Dormitory. There were brief flashes here and there, and from where he sat Zero could smell fire, burnt flesh, and blood – lots of it.

He could sense anger now at the back of his mind, just as he sensed the presence of vampires older than any of the nobles and other vampires now stirring in the campus. Then, the presence of the older vampires were suddenly snuffed out from his perception, as if they had never been there at all. Kaname's presence at the back of his mind gave a jolt of cruel satisfaction, and for a moment it calmed down.

And then, like a mushroom popping out of nowhere, an old pureblood presence suddenly made itself known, and around him, Zero sensed all the lower-class vampires quiver. He knew that feeling – that sudden awareness of the power responsible for your being. It was the feeling of many Blood Bonds activating at the same time.

In his mind, he could feel Kaname fight the Bond. Viciously.

Zero was on his feet even before Kaname opened the door. Ashes still clung onto the pureblood's taupe trench coat, and Zero knew that those ashes had been vampires once. Kaname had Artemis in his hands, and one swing of the scythe destroyed the chair and the manacle and all the spells that Toga cast on them.

"Your uncle—?" Zero began as he held his wrist, where the manacle cut into his skin.

"I have no time to explain," Kaname looked at him briefly, and for a moment the pureblood seemed to struggle with something unseen.

A very familiar scent of blood jarred Zero's senses just then. He stopped dead, his eyes widening. He knew this scent of blood, knew it like the back of his hand. It overpowered everything else, and for a moment Zero felt his world reel with sudden fear and worry. Kaname had sensed it too, and he had turned his head.

Zero was already running out the room.

He dashed past closed doors and hallways until he was out of the admin building. Outside, vampires were fighting against vampires and hunters against hunters. All the windows and curtains of the Sun Dormitories were shut, and nobles stood around it – some on the roof, others by the balconies, and many guarding the doors. But Zero did not see anything as he rushed toward the half-destroyed ruins of the Moon Dormitory, the scent of the familiar blood calling him, almost desperately.

Inside, he felt his heart clench painfully, and he gasped out, one hand flying to his chest. He fell to his knees still clutching his chest, and inside him, his blood seemed to burn. He could not remember pulling Bloody Rose out, but the gun was in his free hand, and it felt hot to the touch, exceedingly so, but he could not let it go.

Silver thorny vines erupted from the Bloody Rose in one grotesque wave. Zero's blood stained the snow as the thorny vines dug into his arm, and then traveled inside him. His heart was beating like mad, and the weapon in his hand seemed to thrum with it in perfect unison, and he could feel the vines penetrating his arm, snaring him, capturing him. He felt the tell-tale hitch of the heart, and realized with half-panic and half-horror that Bloody Rose was _drinking_ his blood.

"ICHIRU!"

Zero shouted the name as he forced himself back onto his feet, his left arm now an unrecognizable tangle of silver thorny vines, gun and blood. He ran toward the Moon Dorms now, running like he never ran before, and he knew he would not forgive himself if something horrible had befallen his brother.

* * *

He found Ichiru dying, lying in a growing pool of his blood. His katana lay useless several feet from his hands, and there was a gaping bloody hole where most of his right side had been. Zero took his twin into his arms, shouting his name, calling for him to fight, and then assuring him blindly that he was going to be all right.

"Pure…blood," Ichiru gasped out, and even as Zero held him, the older Kiryuu knew this was a lost cause, but refused to accept it. "Came from…one of the rooms…was helping the maid evacuate…Rima Tohya…tried to…stall him, but…" Ichiru coughed up blood, and Zero cradled him close. "Was never meant to…be a hunter…got the business…end…of…claws….."

Ichiru's lilac eyes glazed over, and he was soon unmoving in Zero's arms, staring but unseeing.

_No…_

_He can't be dead!_

_Ichiru!_

Zero would not remember any other occasion where he screamed the way he did when his brother died. For what seemed like hours, Zero just sat there, cradling his brother to him. His throat hurt from both the thirst and his screaming, and his did not see anything, not even the vines that now moved as if they had a life of their own. Inside, there was a void in him again; a great big gap where the other half of his soul – Ichiru, had been.

_He's gone…_

_He's…_

_I can't…!_

_My brother-!_

Bloody Rose was hot in his hand once more. Zero let his sobs fade into silence, and after a moment he put Ichiru down on the ground. Around him, the silver vines of the anti-vampire weapon mirrored his anger – they lashed out in random directions, writhing angrily. Slowly, Zero got to his feet and looked at Ichiru's prone form.

_I'll fix you up later, brother._

He gripped Bloody Rose's handle, and the vines started gathering and clumping together. He could pinpoint exactly where by the remaining rooftop of the Moon Dormitory the two purebloods were fighting. The silver vines writhed, and Zero stepped on them, and they provided him with a solid foothold. They surged upward, him and the vines, and he raised his arm and fired toward the ceiling that blocked his path. There was a resounding crash as the vines surged forward as one monstrous thing, taking Zero along with them.

A flash of light, and Zero was out by the rooftop now, standing on the surging vines.

Rido Kuran resembled Kaname in nearly all aspects. He stood proud and foreboding in his shirt and coat, his hair in wild dark auburn curls. His eyes were mismatched red and blue, and his free hand was caked with dried blood – Ichiru's, along with the servants he had consumed earlier when he had arisen from the coffin.

Kaname and Rido stood in a deadlock – Rido was standing behind Kaname and had his hand buried deep into Kaname's back, and Zero did not need to see to know that Rido held Kaname's heart in his hand. But Kaname had the advantage here; while Rido had trapped him, Artemis's curving scythe blade was in turn stuck in Rido's body, into his back, and out from his chest. Kaname got his heart, and it was a blow that wouldn't heal.

"You can't kill me, Kaname," Rido was saying, his fangs bared.

"Wrong," Kaname answered, still calm as if nothing was wrong in the world. He shifted his arms, and Artemis dug deeper into Rido. "I'm not the one to do the killing. He is."

With a god-awful sound, Kaname tore himself from Rido's grasp, pulling himself painfully forward with lots of blood and gore, his heart left beating, bleeding and red, still clutched in Rido's fingers. As he fell forward Zero aimed and fired one, two, three, four, five – all twelve shots echoed with his anger and hate toward his brother's killer.

* * *

Ashes fell like snow. Kaname extended a hand, and snow-mingled ash landed in his upturned palm. He was no stranger to having a heart gouged out in battle. During the wars, he had experienced things far worse. He'd had his head chopped off, once, in one of the skirmishes back then. A gouged heart could be put back inside, where it would heal in two nights' time. A devoured heart could be re-grown, although it would take much longer and leave him as weak as a babe. He was lucky he only suffered the former tonight.

He still held Artemis in his left hand, business end pointing downward, with the scythe blade curving upward. Behind him, the surviving students of the Night Class slowly gathered, and he could feel the questions that nobody would dare ask. He kept quiet for now, one hand clutching his already healing chest. The scent of his blood was a strong temptation, and yet not one of the vampire children now standing behind him dared to bare their fangs and take advantage of his seeming vulnerability.

"I have depended on you too much," he spoke. "And I wish to thank all of you for harking to form the Night Class, no matter how short-lived it has been."

He could sense hesitation, doubt and more questions. Kaname turned halfway and faced the children that stood behind him, and graced them with a faint smile.

"It has been an honor studying with everyone. The Night Class is now disbanded."

They left slowly, one by one, still doubting, still looking lost on what to do. Kaname tsk'd mentally and felt a small amount of disgust.

_Like worker bees buzzing uselessly, almost mindlessly around the Queen._

He turned and faced east, where the first rosy fingers of dawn was starting to unfurl toward the horizon. He would have loved to stay and watch, but ten thousand years and the sunrise still hurt his eyes. A flick of his wrist and Artemis retracted, and he tucked it into his tattered coat. He turned his gaze now to the Sun Dormitory.

_And this is where my obligation ends, Haruka and Juuri._

He walked, and it did not take long to find Zero Kiryuu. Kaname stood a polite arm's length away from where Zero sat on one of the school benches, the corpse of his brother resting, with its head upon his lap.

_A pity. And I would have extended him some of my blood had we met with more fortunate circumstances._

Zero's head was bowed, and for a long while neither of them said anything. Sunrise had arrived, and Kaname felt the pain as the sunlight touched his skin. He took a tentative step forward. And another. And another one.

"I am sorry," he said quietly.

For a moment Zero trembled, and looked up at him with a face filled with the sorrow of twenty lifetimes.

"There's nothing else left for me now," Zero said. "Except you."

Kaname waited, an unpleasant feeling rising in his gut. Nothing showed on his ageless face, however.

"You're the only reason left," Zero continued. "So now…now, I will follow you. There is nothing else."

He said nothing. _But if only…_

His plans had been set into motion long ago. There was no stopping the great mechanism of his goal now.

Kaname broke the eye contact and dropped his gaze.

"As you wish."

_I do want to stay with you. However, I am going to fulfill my original plans._


	6. Chapter 6

**.06**

What he could recall from the funeral were snatches, bits and pieces. He stood there with the other members of the Kiryuu family and his parents, clad in black like the rest, his hands in his pockets as he stared unseeing at the freshly-dug earth, where the coffin that bore his twin brother was being lowered into. Ichiru's death had been fast, too fast, for him. One moment his twin was there, berating him for being late and the next he was gone.

_It should have been me._

If Ichiru had been a properly-ordained hunter, his body would have been cremated. But he had never been one despite wielding an anti-vampire katana, and cremation was not for him. Beside him, his mother was crying her heart out against his father's chest. So many things had happened, and recalling the fleeting things that led to the disbandment of the Night Class seemed to be recalling another life.

The fighting had been centered in Cross Academy, yet the Hunters Association had to deal with its own troubles. The late president of the association had been in cahoots with the Vampire Senate, particularly with the First Elder. Rido Kuran bought the former president with an unprecedented amount of his own blood, Kaien Cross had explained. Rido also utilized connections with pharmaceutical companies and promised the willing hunters to be unleashed against the remaining populace of the purebloods, except himself. Rido had intended to re-establish the Kuran monarchy after getting the heirs in the direct line out of the way – his nephew and niece. It had been common knowledge that Rido was disinherited and put out of the line of succession by his own father, and he took that rather badly.

The late president of the association had ordered the surveillance and incarceration of members of the Kiryuu family, because the clan had considerable power in the hunters' lives and could decide and put things into action independently of the main governing body. It was a threat, and they had to be set aside. But things didn't work out, and Kaien Cross was now the president of the hunter association. Zero's father had declined the post, preferring to stick to field missions with his wife.

On the other hand, the vampires were re-arranging themselves as well. The Council of Elders had been murdered, and when Zero first heard the news he recalled the distinct presence of ancient vampires for one fleeting instant in the skirmish at the school grounds. He put that out of his mind quickly, absently. The royalist noble families were gaining the upper hand, Kaien Cross informed them, and a restoration of the monarchy seemed to be where the vampires were heading next. That meant Kaname, the only surviving member of the Kuran family, would be forced to rule.

_Forced_, Kaien Cross explained, because Kaname seemed disinterested in politics, at least outwardly.

Zero did not respond to the condolences people whispered. Not even Yuuki Nakagawa's hug seemed to shake him from the reverie he had sunk into in the past few weeks. He stayed by Ichiru's grave even as men moved to finally seal it and place a grave marker. He stayed, as the crowd slowly dispersed and left. He stayed, even after his parents had gone home to deal with the yawning gap that now stood in their lives. He stayed, even after the sun started to set, and it started to rain.

In the downpour, Zero looked up at the nearby willow tree and found a single bat hanging upside-down from one of the branches. The bat was a bit bigger than his hand, and had red eyes. It had been there ever since the procession led Ichiru to his final resting place. It was still there, not minding the rain, almost offering him solace and companionship.

_I'll follow you, because there's nothing else._

That was all he could do to keep going. Wake up, follow his master, and try to accomplish the goal he had set for himself four years ago. But truth be told, Zero had never been so unsure of himself like this. He knew the anger was still there and now coupled with his brother's loss – these damn purebloods destroyed lives in their games and yet they never paused to pick up the pieces. That was what he hated about them. And his goal was…

_Why did I let him kiss me?_

The bat squeaked and unfurled its wings as he watched.

* * *

He told his parents he saw no point in going back to school. His mother refused to hear any more of it, and so they reached a compromise. He would finish high school at least; afterward he would be free to do as he wished. He returned to Cross Academy after two weeks of absence to find the Moon Dormitory ruins closed off, and the memories of the Day Class students altered. The Moon Dorm had been passed off for a teacher's dorm that unfortunately got destroyed by a fire before the faculty could move in. Zero was thankful that Ichiru's death was explained as close to the truth as possible – his health had always been weak, and he had been struggling with an illness for a long while now. It had been a valiant fight and Ichiru went in peace.

He decided to move out of the dorms at least, buying out a flat in the town with his savings from his salary as a hunter. It was a small place, but Zero at least had two floors and enough rooms that he knew what to do with, as he kept very few possessions. He woke up early to make food for himself and drag himself off to school, where he mostly dozed off during classes. Kaito had wanted to share the flat with him just to make sure he didn't go 'suicidal' on anyone, but Zero refused point-blank.

"I like my privacy, thank you very much," he'd scowled severely at Kaito when the older hunter had offered to share the flat. He had a nagging suspicion that his parents and Yagari Toga put Kaito up to the task, but he wasn't going to let them have another person tail him around like a duckling.

The hours of the morning passed Zero by in a slow, uninteresting whirl of shallow activities and lessons. If he wasn't dozing off during classes he found himself glancing now and then at the back of the class, where Ichiru used to sit beside their class representative. A new student had taken up that seat now, and the girl had this false idea Zero liked her, because whenever he looked she would always beam at him and smile.

"Why do you keep glancing at her anyway?" Yuuki Nakagawa asked over Science hour one time.

"That was where my brother sat," he replied curtly.

"Ah…" Yuuki understood then, and didn't ask questions since.

* * *

Hunt orders came in the numbers and fast in the wake of the murder of the Council of Elders. The more rebellious vampires had taken advantage of the lack of leadership in droves, going out in daylight and snatching unwary victims off in streets. After classes Zero headed straight to the headquarters and would be handed up to twenty orders in a day, and he would get his hands full with finding little children and young girls and boys also, and trying to return them to their families.

"You have ten tonight," Yagari Toga told him as he arrived for work six in the evening on a Tuesday. "And two kids to find; the number 8 apparently ran off with twins."

"I understand," Zero replied as he carefully skimmed through each hunt order. "I'll go."

He turned and walked away and found Kaito standing by the doorway, arms crossed as he watched him. Zero raised an eyebrow and walked past, and Kaito followed him, easily keeping in step beside him.

"You're overworking," Kaito pointed out. "Your mother will go berserk."

"I'm not a child," Zero replied shortly. "And if you're here to tell on her, then by all means tell her I'm not sleeping."

"So curt," Kaito chuckled.

He made a trip to the armory, and asked for Bloody Rose's ammo, enough bullets to last him tonight and two clips of spares. Kaito was still with him, and the brown-haired hunter asked for spare daggers. They exited the armory together and out into the fragrant spring evening, with the stars shining brightly from the sky. A waxing moon was upon them.

"I thought you might want to know," Kaito began. "The vampires are holding a ball after the negotiations are done. They seek to renew the treaties and other pertinent agreements."

"Have they restored the monarchy?" Zero said as he loaded Bloody Rose ready.

"They have," Kaito said, looking at him. "And I believe I just came up with the perfect excuse for you to be able to finally kill that vampire."

* * *

A spot of dried blood still stuck onto Zero's cheek. The twins, still clad in their school uniforms, were asleep beside each other. He'd lowered Bloody Rose and went to the children, crouched down and checked on their vitals. Both the boy and girl had bite marks on their necks, and though they looked anemic, Zero supposed they were fine. But he was going to bring them to the doctor in the headquarters anyway to have them checked. He carried them, one in each arm. The girl's head lolled harmlessly onto his shoulder.

Both the boy and girl couldn't have been more than ten. They shared the same dark brown hair, but the boy had more freckles on his cheeks than his sister. The kids' parents must be worried sick. For a moment Zero studied their seemingly peaceful and sleeping faces.

The more daring vampires snatched off children when they could, and Zero knew the reason why. Vampires preferred three classes of blood above all else – the blood of their partner, the blood of children and the blood of a pureblood. Zero did not wish to know what was it with children's blood that vampires preferred so; but he knew a lover's blood sated a vampire's thirst for a long time. There had been records of a vampire going as long as six months without anything else after feeding off a loved one. The blood of a pureblood, on the other hand, provided the drinker with greater powers and longevity. There was a saying that if one fed off a pureblood long enough, one would also become a pureblood, but Zero knew that was a ridiculous rumor. Purebloods were purebloods because of their genes, not because of what they ate.

Of all three classes of blood Zero had the chance to indulge on the third, thanks to Kaname Kuran. Not only did it prevent him from falling into End, but now it gave him unusual powers with Bloody Rose as well. He didn't need bullets once Bloody Rose twined her vines around him and started to feed on him. It was like he became one huge anti-vampire weapon once that happened. He didn't understand all of Bloody Rose's powers yet, and he was determined to take his time on that one.

His throat felt dry, but even then, the warm and small bodies of the children he carried were far from attracting his hunger. Zero stopped by a pedestrian lane and waited for the stoplight to flash red. Civilians also stood beside him, minding their own business. For all they cared he could be a caretaker of the children, out to take them home to their parents.

He crossed the street carrying the children, his mind now wandering to Kaito's plan.

_It wouldn't work._

He surprised himself with the confidence that the thought came to mind. But he knew that Kaname Kuran would not be baited with such a simple trick like that; the pureblood woke up each day and did his scheming, and Zero knew he would be able to anticipate that sort of trick not only from the hunters, but from nobles too who'd love to spite him just because, to see if a young one like him would be fit to re-take the throne.

But somehow Zero knew Kaname Kuran was not at all 'young'.

_He says he made the hunter weapons. If there's any truth there, then he's over ten thousand years old._

If that age was correct then Kuran could very well have seen all kinds of tricks in his long life already, and suddenly Kaito's little plan seemed to be a petty jab that could be easily dodged. But he couldn't be all negative either, Zero knew.

_Sometimes the littlest plans do their magic._

He handed over the children to the physician on duty in HQ. Zero lingered a little to have the doctor assure him that the kids would be fine after a week's rest and reinforcement of some vitamins with iron. He glanced at the sleeping boy and girl for the last time before going on his way. The night was still young, and he still had five more hunts to accomplish.

* * *

Zero hated dressing up, and as a vampire hunter he preferred to do field missions than guard duty in vampires' soirees. He stood in front of his full-sized mirror, looking at his reflection. He wore a charcoal gray frock coat with a white shirt inside. He tried his best to polish his shoes, and then halfway remembered why he was putting so much effort into the ridiculous task of making himself pretty. He stopped and wore his shoes; no vampire would pay mind to what footwear a hunter was wearing in the first place.

The ball was going to be held in one of the outhouses of the Aidou family, and Zero couldn't help but think this was all going to be a funny little reunion that was held too soon. He wasn't particularly fond of Hanabusa Aidou and Ruka Souen; he never had much respect or tolerance for their conceited attitude. He would much rather be well off if the little party only had Akatsuki Kain and the old Moon Dorm maid.

Kaito and Yagari Toga came round at nine in the evening and they all left together, sharing the car with Jinmu. Kaien Cross had gone ahead with the other hunter delegates already. Zero only sat silently at the back seat, and remembered if his parents would be there. Yagari Toga snorted and said the Kiryuu couple disliked parties anyway, so they remained in their field hunt together. Zero felt a twinge of annoyance at that; sometimes his parents cheated him off things like this.

Outside the venue was nothing but a dilapidated warehouse. They were met with two other hunters who informed them that the negotiations were over. Zero silently trailed after Kaito and his master. The sorry ruin of the warehouse gave way for a splendid ballroom underground, and already the vampire crowd, with all their glittering magnificence, was down on the floor. Zero's senses almost bristled; he could sense three purebloods more aside from Kaname Kuran. All four were nowhere to be seen.

He stationed himself by one of the pillars by the southern end of the ballroom, and he could sense the scrutiny from the vampires present. Kaito soon arrived beside him with a glass of wine.

"Wonder why they spend so much time dressing up," said Kaito. "Blood is a bitch to wash out of those clothes, don't you agree?"

"I don't really give a fuck about how they worry about their laundry," Zero replied, his eyes already turning to the great rosewood doors by the far end of the ballroom.

The doors opened and in walked his master, and Zero's senses were at an all-time high. He stood his ground, his face showing nothing, aware as he was of Kaito's scrutiny. The nobles bent their knees and uttered praises and accolades, but for all of their words, Kaname Kuran looked anything but pleased. Zero knew that expression well; it was boredom and weariness with something one did not like to do anymore. Still, Kuran observed etiquette and made noncommittal replies and smiles.

His throat was dry again. He wanted to walk up to Kuran and bite down on that delicious-looking neck, where the thick blood would rush out and sate his thirst. Instead, Zero reached for his blood tablets and popped five into his mouth.

He turned his head at the creak of wheels, and found a huge luggage dragged in by Kaito. He opened it to reveal a familiar Day Class girl with red hair and blue eyes; Zero could only remember her vaguely, as she was a senior of his from school. The girl looked frightened.

"Will I find him here?" she was asking Kaito.

"Oh, yes, there he is now," Kaito pointed to someone across the room. "Go to him."

_What the fuck is he playing at?_

Zero grabbed Kaito by the collar. "What the hell-?"

"Her boyfriend is a vampire," he'd said nonchalantly. "He was a former Night Class student. They haven't been able to meet for a while now because of complications, and as a teacher I thought I'd help my _students_." Something flashed in Kaito's eyes as the girl pushed into the vampire crowd, who looked positively startled to find a human in their midst. "If one of them makes a move to hurt her, then you're perfectly free to blow the brains out of _his_ head. He's broken the Blood Bond, yes? I don't see why you can't, too."

Zero felt his hand tremble with anger. Kaname Kuran hadn't broken the Blood Bond; only the two of them knew that truth. Zero had freed him from the Bond that held him enslaved to his uncle. The Bond still stood, between the two of them, and if Kuran couldn't do it, then Zero doubted his own success with it. His agitation touched the presence at the back of his mind, and out of the corner of his vision he saw Kaname turn to look at them, albeit discreetly. The girl was now halfway into the crowd.

"Excuse me! Let me through!" Zero could hear her squeaky, nervous voice.

The crowd murmured as Zero and Kaname watched. One of the three remaining unseen purebloods now made her presence known; she was a tall and slim woman with hair as white as snow, and eyes a soft red. She wore the kimono of an _oiran_, with her obi tied up front, and she moved as if she was not wearing four layers of clothes upon her shoulders.

_Hiou_, Zero thought, the family name coming to mind almost at once.

The woman was heading for the girl, and Zero left his post, but Kaname beat him to it. When he got to them, Kaname was already holding the wrist of the Hiou woman.

"Dear aunt," he was saying. "That would be impolite if you were to go grab my guests at random. What will the hunters say of us?" His eyes met Zero's for a brief moment.

"I was going to lead her to you, nephew," the Hiou woman was saying. "After all, I also still need an explanation as to why my husband has not gone home to me after visiting you."

Zero took a step forward, feeling tension rise. _This could get messy._

"Lead her to me, or use her as a hostage to force answers out of me?" Kaname flashed her a brilliant smile. "Come now, aunt, I know your side of the family is one for discretion, but this?"

Zero could sense the other hunters already on stand-by. The nobles did nothing but remained in their places, eagerly watching the two purebloods. After all, if this came into a bloodbath, they would eagerly pounce on which of the two fell on his or her knees first, and drink him or her dry right there and then.

"Where is my husband?" the Hiou woman demanded, looking calm, her hand slack as Kaname gripped her wrist.

"I'm afraid he got himself killed by a hunter on perfectly valid grounds," Kaname said coldly, his eyes now turning icy. "Zero, if you would kindly reiterate what I have said in the reports."

Zero turned to Kuran for a moment, and then faced the red-eyed woman with white hair. "He killed my brother in the school grounds after leading his servants there. If I didn't put a stop to him, all the agreements would be broken."

She looked at him then with hate. She snatched her wrist from Kaname's hand and drew herself up, and Zero had a hand in his coat. A pink tongue flicked out of her lips and licked her fang tips, and then the woman withdrew, trailing her silken kimono with her.

"I do not forget, Kaname," she said as she left.

"How amusing, so do I," Kaname replied after her. He now turned to the trembling human girl. "Looking for Kiriyama, is it?" He scanned the crowd, but there was no need, the boy was already there with them.

"Master Kaname – I didn't mean – that is, I'm-!"

"Spare me your apology, she needs it more than I do," Kaname told Kiriyama. "You should look after her more."

_Damn you, Kaito, you almost had us start a war!_ Zero bit the inside of his cheek, and had half a mind to strangle the older hunter later. He let his hand fall to his side and turned to walk away.

"Kiryuu. If you please,"

He stopped on his tracks and looked at Kaname. The pureblood's eyes held a faint crimson glow from within. He raised his eyes to the balconies surrounding the ballroom. He turned and exited, and Zero had no choice but to follow him.

Once they were in the servants' passageway, the scent came to Zero too.

"Blood," he whispered as he trailed after Kaname, whose steps had now quickened.

The air seemed to thicken, and Zero knew Kaname used his power. It was before a door of one of the private parlors they found themselves at. Kaname opened the door and entered the air thickening more in his wake.

"Breathing will be a bit of a problem, but bear with me as I keep the scent of the blood to us both for now," he explained.

There seemed to be nothing amiss in the room, but Zero's feet led him to the closet, while Kaname to the round table.

_Blood._

He opened the closet and took a step back as the body slid out of it, a woman, one of the hunters who had gone with Kaien Cross earlier. The bite mark on her neck was still fresh and bleeding, but she already had her hunter stake buried deep in her own chest. Her fingertips were slowly turning to ash.

"I'm guessing it is Ouri," Kaname spoke, and when Zero turned to him, he had pulled the tablecloth from the table and was standing there watching as ashes slowly fell to the carpeted floor like powder.

_That farce is now over,_ Zero thought. The dead hunter-turned-vampire's blood had now reached his half-polished shoes.

"This is some way to start your reign," Zero said as he watched Kaname's face for any reaction.

"I hate reigning," Kaname replied softly. "I hated it before, I still hate it now. I don't make for a good King."

"Then what are you good at?" Zero said as he went to Kuran's side and took the tablecloth from his hands. "Ruining lives?"

Kuran looked into his eyes and made their lips touch at the lightest gesture.

"I'm good with picking up what pieces I could," he spoke against Zero's lips. "But that's just about it."

He withdrew just as the door opened and Kaien Cross entered the room, worry etched on his features. Kaname exited the room, presumably to address the now agitated crowd. He had relinquished his hold on the air, Zero noticed belatedly, but the tightening of his chest and breathing had nothing to do with that, not at all.

_Damn you, Kaname. Damn you._


	7. Chapter 7

**.07**

He could remember the scent of autumn. That distinct scent pervaded the evening, something of earth and dried leaves and fallen acorns, and though it wasn't alive, wasn't as green as spring, he liked it nonetheless. Zero walked the streets, hands in his coat pockets, watching the streetlamps flare to life around him just as windows also started glowing in preparation for the night. This was the first autumn, and eventually winter, that he would have to go without his brother. The knowledge that Ichiru was no longer there still pained him, and if he realized, there came the knowledge too of this big gap in his life. He missed his brother dearly, but he was done with weeping.

He had just come from school, and was now off to work. He was to hunt down four targets for this evening, a perfect distraction for keeping his mind away from missing Ichiru too badly. He'd left his school bag at home when he took a detour; got Bloody Rose and went on his way. He inhaled the night air, and in the western horizon the sun had set completely, the last few of its pink fingers saying farewell. Zero quickened his steps; the darkness was a welcome to him, a calming balm to his sharp senses. He went now to hunt.

* * *

The target, after seeing how Zero blew its comrade into ashes with one bullet from Bloody Rose, turned tail and now fled. Zero calmly followed the level E's presence on the rooftops of that part of the town.

_East._

Zero pumped his legs into an almighty jump that let him reach the roof of an old, five-story apartment complex with ease. Pausing only for seconds with which to regain his balance, Zero ran, the roof beneath his feet. He jumped the gap between the buildings to the next, his senses focused and honed to the now frightened target determined to get away from him.

His thoughts were calm, processing the news of the past days. The news of Ouri's death leaked out fast, the moment Kaname had relinquished his hold in the air in that soiree. He had gone to speak to the crowd and announce Ouri's seemingly suicide, while the hunters scrambled to find out who had bitten their fallen comrade. In the end, when all the nobles were ushered home, the hunters confronted the three remaining purebloods in the venue – Kaname himself, Sara Shirabuki and Shizuka Hiou.

Kaien Cross did not need to interrogate Kaname anymore, and proceeded directly to ask questions to Sara Shirabuki. The woman had been Ouri's fiancée, and though she seemed candid and cooperative with information, Zero decided he did not trust her. She seemed to provide a valid excuse; that she had indeed gone to see Ouri briefly, and went to look for a servant to get tea things for her and her fiancée, when the tragedy struck. As she answered Kaien's questions she kept looking at him, and Zero did not appreciate the scrutiny. When Kaien Cross went to Shizuka next, she just looked at him and refused to say anything. Kaname simply watched the questioning with an unreadable expression, and Zero could remember how calmly his master was seated. It was as if nothing was wrong in the world.

But the hunters also knew that wasn't the end of it; even though Sara Shirabuki provided what seemed to be an adequate alibi, purebloods could be in many places at the same time, thanks to their ability to create projections of themselves and send those things to places. An alter was nearly as good as its original self, the only difference was, an alter did not have heartbeat, nor blood. Perfect tools for a murder, and so easily vanished without a trace.

Zero's thoughts were cut just as a familiar bat flitted up from his left side. He paused on the rooftop and watched the bat; for a moment if flew uncertain where to go, and then its ears swiveled and it squeaked, as if egging him on, and then flew eastward. Zero followed the bat, his eyes on it.

Since Ichiru's funeral, a bat had never failed to show to him every day. It mostly maintained distance; he often found it hanging upside down by the tree beside his apartment. He knew then that it was no ordinary bat, and during the fifth day, he raised Bloody Rose and shot it. But on the sixth day a bat was there again, and he let it be, so long as it didn't think it was its business to go into his house.

Now the bat decided to help him in this hunt. The bat reached the end of a street and it flew in circles. Without really putting much effort into thinking about it, Zero jumped from the rooftop and pinned the Level E on the ground by landing on it. The creature tried to struggle and snarled monstrously up at him, but Zero had Bloody Rose against its forehead and fired.

He straightened up after the ashes had settled on the ground, brushed his coat, tucked his gun and exited into the main street. A few vehicles passed by on this part of the city, and as he walked Zero only counted a dingy looking cab and a black van. Both did not pay him any mind. From the corner of his eye the bat flitted forward and was lost in the darkness.

_What are you up to now, Kuran?_

He had half a mind to shoot the bat again just for the heck of it. But it had gone, and Zero decided he was not going to make a fool out of himself, chasing a bat in the evening with a gun out. His bullets were much too precious for such a stupid task.

* * *

His neighbors were all asleep by the time Zero rounded the street to his neighborhood. The other flats and apartment buildings had long since went for light's out, the windows dark and blinded. An alley cat was busy foraging from a nearby trash bin, and for a moment Zero watched it as he fished for his keys from his coat pocket. His thoughts strayed to his school work. Since he had gone straight to hunt after school, he had five homework waiting for him upstairs. That wasn't really a problem; Zero could pull an all-nighter and then nap in class come the next day. He went into his flat and shut the door behind him, not really minding to turn on the lights.

Zero let his coat drop onto the couch as he proceeded to the kitchen. Opening the fridge he took out a microwave dinner and proceeded to reheat it, afterwards going upstairs for his school things. He went back down to the kitchen and turned on the lights, and opened his books and notes for the homework. The microwave chimed, and Zero took a moment to take his dinner out of it. In a matter of minutes he was settled down, eating and writing at the same time.

As he wrote, he could not help but remember how Ichiru never had much strength for all-nighters. His younger brother liked to finish his homework early; Ichiru put off dressing into house clothes after classes just to get his studying done two hours before dinner. He excelled in Literature, Ichiru. He never had problem recalling lines from _The Iliad_ or _The Once and Future King_, and Zero kind of envied him for it. Ichiru had also loved Wordsworth and Edgar Allan Poe. Zero remembered getting him a box set of Poe's works for their fourteenth birthday. He could remember how Ichiru had beamed when he opened the present.

While his twin excelled in Literature, Ichiru was average in everything else, and flunked his Math really bad. The only all-nighters Ichiru could manage were desperate cram sessions with him, and those were frequent once exams were looming. Zero often took pity on his brother on nights like those, and would send Ichiru to bed come twelve midnight, and just teach him again early the next day.

Zero also remembered Ichiru had wanted to pursue a Humanities degree in a university in…

Abruptly Zero stopped writing. A teardrop had made a big blot on his page, and before he could realize what was going on, Zero cupped his face in his own hands as he shed the tears. His shoulders shook as he wept silently, his homework and dinner forgotten. Times like these he hated to be alone, because he remembered Ichiru in these times, and the tears would come despite Zero deciding he'd had enough of weeping. And sometimes there was no stopping the tears; sometimes, during the bad days, he would cry himself to sleep and go to class with swollen eyes and nobody, not even Yuuki, would dare look at him and voice out the words.

"Gods," Zero half-gasped, half-snarled the words as he rose and walked to the sink. He reached for a glass and filled it with tap water, and let two blood tablets dissolve in it. Zero drank the concoction in three large gulps, and afterward he leaned on the counter, his eyes focused but listless on the floor. He turned to fill the glass again with water, when a face reflected in the windowpane made him stop.

A woman, with white hair and pale red eyes, clad in a kimono.

Zero could only manage a widening of the eyes in that split second of realization, before Shizuka Hiou's hand grasped him painfully by the hair and she'd sent him smashing into the counter, sending his books and dinner flying.

The blow dizzied him, and the pain muddled his thoughts. Shizuka's hand now closed in around his neck, and her claws dug, drawing blood. She hurled him away from her again with her tremendous strength, sending him to the living room and crashing into the television.

In the middle of the hurt Zero's one clear thought was that he left Bloody Rose upstairs in his room.

Gasping blood, he opened his eyes and saw Shizuka standing above him. She planted her bare foot on his chest, and kept him pinned on the floor. Zero glowered at her and grasped her by the ankle with both hands and tried to get her off him, but the pureblood woman proved to be heavier than an island.

"My nephew wasn't one to dirty his hands with such menial work," Shizuka spoke quietly, her eyes glittering with murderous intent. "And though you are a tool, I will take delight in killing you."

Goddamn! He should have sensed her enter his house! Zero writhed under Shizuka's foot, and she picked him up again by the neck. She snarled as she bared her fangs, and she bit him hard and deep, making him cry out in pain. She tore a chunk of his neck with that bite, and her mouth was now messy with his blood.

"You killed my husband," she said in a hushed voice before she dug her free hand into his chest.

He screamed. The pureblood woman dug deeper, and Zero knew that if she reached his heart, he would be in terrible danger. Summoning all his strength, Zero grabbed her by the arm that was now reaching into his chest, and he gave a big twist and a pull, and there was lots of blood, and the sound of flesh and bone separating—

He fell to the floor gasping, and he let go of the severed arm, and his fingers fumbled for anything, anything at all to stall the woman with. Zero's fingers closed in on the broken TV's edge, and he grabbed it, and before Shizuka could pick him up again with her remaining hand, he smashed the TV into her head, again, and again, and again.

He let the ruined TV go and scrambled up, half-slipping and half-falling on the pool of blood and broken glass on the floor – and he ran for it, scrambling up the stairs and running toward his room, where Bloody Rose was. Halfway toward his desk Zero felt cloth wrap around his ankle, and in a huge yank, his legs were pulled underneath him. Crying out angrily he made a wild grab, and managed to pull Bloody Rose by its silver chain. He fell to the floor, and Bloody Rose too, landing a foot away from him.

"Do you think you can kill me with such a small thing?" Shizuka said silkily. She had used her obi to stop him from reaching his gun, and still grasping the other end of it, started to drag him across the floor to her. Half of her face was a bloody mess, and the grisly wound at the side of her head was already healing itself, the flesh moving as if something separate from her entirely.

_I will not die here, not like this!_

Zero twisted himself and dug his claws into the floor in order not to get dragged off completely. His hand still grasped Bloody Rose's chain – which was good – and he pulled, and felt his fingers close in on the gun's handle.

He whipped around, cocked the gun and fired - one, two, three, four, five – each bullet hitting Shizuka on the chest, shoulders, neck and abdomen. The pureblood woman dropped the end of her obi shrieking as she tried to clutch at the bullet entry wounds. She lost her balance and fell down, still screaming in agony as the bullets did their work to rid her of her healing abilities.

Meanwhile, Zero struggled to get onto his feet. Pain wracked him from all sides, and the blood loss was now taking its toll –he flitted in and out of consciousness. He managed to stand, but he wobbled dangerously.

_Must not lose consciousness—_

He still held Bloody Rose with two hands. His vision now getting hazier, Zero aimed at the writhing pureblood on the floor.

"Die," he said hoarsely as he fired, right toward her head.

He had a fleeting glimpse of the horror on her bloodied face before the cracks spread on her body. And then she shattered like glass, and even before her shards hit the floor they turned into a fine silvery powder, scattering in the room.

Bloody Rose slipped from Zero's fingers as he collapsed onto his back on the floor. His breath came in ragged gasps, and he could not feel his torso or his neck. His vision started to darken slowly, slowly.

_It must be terrible…injuries like these…it just doesn't make sense…but I know…I know I'll…_

And then, there was nothing.

* * *

He wasn't sure how long he had been out, but it couldn't have been such a long time, because it was still dark. But as Zero's senses regained themselves, he became painfully aware of police sirens outside his flat. He was also aware of several voices from downstairs, followed by a crash – authorities were trying to break down his door.

_I can't be found here!_

Forcing himself up, Zero's fingers closed in around Bloody Rose, and he went for the nearest escape route – the window. The night air hit his face like a blast as he jumped from the window and onto the nearest roof he could reach. He wobbled, and his consciousness teetered dangerously into oblivion yet again, but he grabbed a hold of himself and broke into a run, fleeing on the rooftops.

_I just…killed a pureblood…!_

He had no idea where he was going. The healing and blood loss now took their toll, and a powerful wave of the thirst hit Zero, making him fall onto all fours. He coughed and hacked, hands curling into fists. His purple eyes made way for red, and he could feel his fangs bare themselves.

_Blood…I want blood…_

With a snarl, Zero picked himself up yet again and jumped, this time landing onto the highway below. There was the god-awful sound of screeching brakes and blaring horns, and twin suns of light invaded Zero's eyesight. The car crashed into him, and for the nth time, Zero was sent hurtling away and landing on his back.

_I just wouldn't die._

He was still alive, and being alive meant every ounce of pain from his hundred injuries had to be felt every second.

_I just. Won't. Die._

He rolled to his side, and he could hear voices shouting for help, asking for paramedics. He tried to get away, but he was simply too weak now, too muddled with pain, to even manage. And, from the corner of his bloodied vision, the bat flitted from out of nowhere, circling him. It wasn't alone, and soon more bats came, and they shrieked and fluttered around Zero, and he could feel their wings beating against his skin, and their little hot tongues lapping up the blood from his injuries. Their wing beats drowned out the sound of the cars and the voices, and Zero felt the last of his strength leave him as the bats bore him away, away, away.

* * *

Zero was sure he was dreaming. It was one of the strangest dreams he had ever been in, he was sure of it. He stood in the middle of a gigantic chessboard, and around him were black chess pieces, all over fifty feet tall. He was standing on a square where a black knight would have been, and across the board he could see white pieces, all of them huge also. Several pieces lay broken on the board, and from where he stood Zero could see the white queen, and it had several large cracks on its body.

A white pawn moved, and as Zero watched where he stood, the giant chess game played itself out. He stood there, holding Bloody Rose, waiting, waiting. But he was never compelled to leave his square, that is, until the white queen moved too. Zero took steps, and stopped directly in front of the white queen. Looking up at it, he aimed with Bloody Rose and fired four shots, and the white queen shattered all around him, broken bits raining down—

His eyes snapped open. For a while Zero stared dumbly, uncomprehendingly at the dark canopy above him. Belatedly, he came to understand that he was lying down on a four-poster bed with the hangings drawn. His limbs felt heavy like river clay. Somewhere a door opened. Zero turned his head to see Seiren approach him. He stared at her, not understanding a thing.

Seiren looked back at him, and she looked exactly as she had been when he'd seen her last, before Rido Kuran stormed Cross Academy. Her hair was still in its familiar bob, though her clothes were different. She wore a deep red qi pao and she bent to peer at him closely. Zero could take in her scent – she smelled of incense.

"We were afraid you wouldn't recover," she told him. As he watched, Seiren took a glass of water and let some five tablets dissolve in it. "Here. You need this."

She helped him sit up and lean on several pillows. He drank down the water and blood tablet mix. It had been three months since he'd discovered he could tolerate the drink, and had gradually turned to it rather than just pop the tablets in his mouth. He finished the drink and Seiren fixed him a second glass, and a third.

He still watched her as she put the glass to the nightstand beside the bed. She turned to him, a ghost of a smile flickering on her lips.

"Master Kaname was right about your strength," she said softly. "To be able to survive an assault from a pureblood…you're quite different."

"Where is this?" Zero asked, his voice still a bit hoarse.

Seiren gestured around the room. Zero took a better look at his surroundings; he was currently on a large four-poster bed, and beyond was a simply furnished room that did not look different from a considerably expensive suite in an European hotel. The orange sunlight that filtered through the curtains was a deep orange.

"You are in the Kuran manor," Seiren explained. "Rest – recovering from injuries like yours will need all of your strength. I will have someone bring you food shortly."

He was silent as he watched Seiren leave the room. The Kuran manor? Where was he exactly? He tried to remember how he got there, and recalled the bats. It had to be a hundred bats that spirited him away to wherever this was. Zero raised his hands and unbuttoned his shirt. His chest was mostly healed, but the flesh on the spot where Shizuka had dug her hand into had a strange wrinkled and raw look. He then reached a hand to his neck, and felt that the healing flesh there felt the same. The healing areas did not hurt, though Zero felt oddly ticklish about them.

He got to his feet and walked toward the window, wincing briefly against the setting sun. Outside, he could see dead trees for miles on end. At the far horizon looked like an outline of an aqueduct system. He could also see snow-capped mountains somewhere to his left, as well as the edge of what looked like a frozen lake.

He couldn't place exactly where he was on the globe at that moment. But Zero knew he had to inform his parents that everything was all right. He didn't know for how long he had been unconscious. Turning away from the window, Zero exited the room and out to a carpeted hallway. He looked left and right, but the corridor was empty. Zero took a moment to pick up Bloody Rose and went on his way.

It turned out that he was in one of the rooms by the first floor of the manor. The place was certainly big, and had touches of influences from different periods, but Rococo style pervaded more in the place. Zero followed the hallway and found himself soon by the Great Hall. There was a fire going on in the big fireplace, and above it was a portrait of Juuri and Haruka Kuran with their children. Zero studied the painting in silence until his senses sharpened, and he turned around to find Kaname standing a few feet behind him.

"How are you feeling?" Kaname asked, studying him with what looked like was mild interest.

"I've been through worse," Zero replied. "Do you have a phone somewhere?"

Kaname reached into his pocket and handed him a cell phone. Zero took the gadget and dialed his mother's number. It took her a while to answer, but when she heard his voice and recognized him, relief seemed to wash over her in great waves. Kaname moved away so he could have all the opportunity to talk, but for the most part, Zero did not know how to explain what had just happened to him. He ended up assuring his mother that he was all right, and that he expected to be back to them and file a report with the association. When he'd ended the call, Kaname had already taken the liberty of setting food on the tea table.

"Why did she attack me?" Zero asked straightforwardly.

"It's only natural," Kaname answered. "We killed her husband. And she cannot kill me openly, what with my precarious position. The Hiou family has always had a history of its members going insane."

Silence settled between them. Zero turned over Kaname's phone in his hands – a simple Blackberry Curve; he didn't know what unit exactly – before handing it back to its owner. Kaname took the phone and pocketed it.

"I killed-." Zero began, but cut himself off.

"Yes, I know," Kaname half-raised a hand. "You killed Shizuka Hiou, a pureblood."

Somehow Zero felt that he had to justify himself and his actions. "She assaulted me, Kuran. Entered my house uninvited and tried to gouge out my heart. All because of your schemes that got me into whatever this game you're playing." He ground his teeth furiously. "Will you not let me have peace? Haven't you done enough damage already? Why don't you just go out and challenge whoever it is to a fight to the death someplace and get it over with?"

Kaname answered with a small, emotionless smile. "I don't work like that, and you know it."

"Well you better work someway else!" Zero shouted. "And if you goddamn think saving me will make me forget everything, you're wrong!"

"I never said such a thing, nor wanted any of the sort," Kaname replied calmly. "The food will get cold."

Zero tsk'd and with one sweep of the hand, sent the dishes flying and breaking on the carpeted floor with a crash.

Kaname watched him without doing anything. "As you wish. But as you know, you have killed a pureblood, even if it is for self-defense. My command as King can only go so far, but if you move rashly and recklessly now, you will also put your parents in danger."

The words put Zero to a pause. He sat down on the couch and clutched his head.

"That makes it two purebloods murdered in your watch," Zero spoke up after a few minutes' silences. "If this keeps up, the nobles will think twice of restoring you to the throne."

Kaname chuckled softly at his words. "Be candid with me, Zero. If that happens, you will have all the excuse in the world to ask for a hunt order with my name written on it. Isn't that what you want?"

Zero didn't see the point of continuing their conversation, especially when both knew where they were headed.

"Shizuka gave you a nasty wound," Kaname murmured. "It took you an entire week."

"Doesn't matter," Zero half-snarled in reply.

He was aware that Kaname was studying him. Zero straightened up and met the pureblood's gaze.

"Do you need blood, Zero?"

_Tch. What is he-?_

"I don't need your blood," Zero spat, rising.

"You're a very bad liar," Kaname smiled faintly. He raised his right hand, palm turned upward. "_Drink_."

The last word came as a command, and Zero grit his teeth as he knelt in front of Kaname and held the pureblood's wrist to his lips. Zero licked the skin and bit into the pulse, and blood spurted out into his waiting mouth. He took his sweet time drinking that red river of life, and realized how much he had been craving for Kaname's blood.

"Like a child," Kaname whispered. "You feed so messily."

Zero licked his own lips and glared up at his master. "Nobody taught me how to feed. And I had no intention to live off blood my whole life, until you came into the picture."

"But you desire blood, as much as anyone," Kaname laughed softly as his hand closed in around Zero's throat. His grip was firm, but he did not move to crush Zero's windpipe. "No matter how you snarl about it, no matter how much you deny. I know you want blood so much you'd die for it."

"Let me g-!"

Kuran's lips closed over his own. The familiar scent of blood and roses flooded Zero's senses, and it was intoxicating. He tried to part his lips for air, but Kuran simply didn't give him a chance. The pureblood's hot tongue explored his mouth and licked his fangs, and despite himself, Zero gave an involuntary shiver. Kaname's hand had by now released his neck and moved to his nape; pulling him closer into the kiss. Their fangs touched in the midst of that heated lip lock, and Zero half-hissed into the heated duel, and nicked Kaname's tongue in the process. It was his turn now to leave the other vampire breathless.

For several heated minutes the two of them fought for dominance in that kiss. Zero wasn't sure how he managed it, but gasping for air, he grasped Kaname's wrists and pushed the pureblood down onto the carpet. Panting, they both stared at each other.

"You little…" Zero hissed.

"I'm afraid I don't give control that easily…" Kaname smirked. There was almost a distinct _purr_ in his words, and before Zero could decide that it was indeed a purr, Kaname swooped up toward his neck and bit him. A faint, pained cry was all Zero could manage before Kaname easily rolled him off and topped him.

"Sh-!"

But Kaname did not stop drinking until his heart gave a hitch, and by then, the blood loss left Zero limp and defenseless. There was a trickle of blood down Kaname's chin, and his eyes glowed red.

"What do you know of pleasure, Zero?" Kaname asked in his hushed way of speaking. "And when I say pleasure, I mean pleasure for our kind, pleasure for vampires." He had his hand over the healing wound on Zero's chest, and the sensitive skin tingled under his touch. "Blood is….everything…"

_I can't move—what is he—what – ah—_

Kaname raised Zero's wrist to his lips, and bit. But this time, the pain of the bite brought with it another sensation, something different, something that tugged inside Zero's being. His heart was straining now, pounding inside his chest, trying hard to keep his blood flowing. Blood pounded in his ears, blood made his face flush.

"I draw your blood away…" Kaname's words echoed oddly in Zero's hearing. "Direct it somewhere else….and…"

He pushed himself down and Zero felt a wave of pleasure engulf him.

"What-ah-!"

"Yes…at times it's better when you're blood is just recovering, and it slows down just to…"

Kaname was still fully clothed and straddled on him. He held Zero's limp arm up, the bloody wrist close to his lips as he moved in a slow rock, grinding painfully slowly down on the growing heat somewhere by Zero's hips.

"Just to be all…."

Zero couldn't understand if the blood loss had something to do with it. He arched against Kaname, gasping, trying to fight and yet not with the damn rocking the pureblood was doing. He cried out, and he wanted the control, yes, he wanted to, but the damn blood loss was making it hard to think, and there was something in him, something hot, something, something—

Kaname sank his fangs yet again into the healing punctures by Zero's wrist, and Zero couldn't handle the pleasure that crashed all over him, and he cried out, almost screaming, as his climax took control of him.

Above him, Kaname smiled into his bleeding wrist. Zero felt limp, and weak, too weak. Kaname reached out a hand and brushed the damp hair from Zero's face.

"So soon…?" he smiled.

Zero opened his mouth to talk, but he could not form the words. Pleasure made him tremble involuntarily, and his heart still pounded away in his chest, furiously, furiously.


	8. Chapter 8

**.08**

He could remember the way the other hunters' gaze felt. Every eye was on his person, and in their stares he could sense the questions, the conjectures and the assumptions. The chains felt heavy on his wrists, and he was aware of how it snaked around him, preserving him now against the ancient defenses of the hunters' headquarters. He kept his gaze ahead, his expression blank. At the back of his mind, he remembered when he had been human and young, witnessing a similar scene one ordinary day. Kaname had been in his place, walking the path he now treads. Zero had never thought it would come to this – that he would be the vampire, branded as dangerous, thrown into the cell that he had once guarded.

He paused on his tracks as he was about to be led into a corner; his parents stood by alongside his master. His mother's hand was up and on her face was fear for him; she wanted to go to him but his father stopped her. On his father's face too he saw the fear, but a more restrained version of it – his father had always had a better hand controlling his emotions. He took a moment to pause on his tracks, to allow a faint smile to come to his lips, hoping it was enough of an assurance. All Zero had was mere seconds before he was led away, and his mother's voice called him, ringing.

_Zero!_

* * *

Kaname sat in the great hall, his head down, his hands clasped together, unheeding to the arguing of the nobles before him. By the ancient laws, traditions and agreements, exclusive jurisdiction was given to the vampire court for the trial of a murderer of a pureblood. The enactment of a statute punishing a murder of a pureblood with death had been of recent make; at the earliest, the law was only about six thousand years old, made when the wars had finally waned, and the human population was replenishing itself with a vengeance. He was no longer awake when the statute was enacted. If he had been, it would not have become law at all. Now, the vampire court and the vampire society in general was bound by its senseless terms. Kaname could only wonder which clever trickster suggested to his son to give force to the law.

He straightened up in his seat, this piece of furniture the others called a throne, and inhaled. Even the air tasted of the tension now crackling before the heads of the ancient clans. For a moment Kaname looked up, and allowed himself to admire the intricately detailed ceiling of the hall. Gold carvings and paintings enough to rival Michelangelo's work on the Sistine Chapel – and chandeliers made of gold. Even before, vampires already loved to surround themselves with riches. It had not changed. And yet…

"I will not be suffered here to understand that my great-granddaughter's life will not be avenged!"

Reluctantly, Kaname tore his gaze from the ornate ceiling and focused it to the speaker. At the right side of his hand were representatives of the Hiou family, including its progenitor, the ancient pureblood Uruki. Like all of his descendants Uruki bore the ethereal beauty, pale hair and pale red eyes marking his clan. He was clad in a pure white silk kimono, his sleeves trailing. His silver hair was elegantly drawn to sweep toward his red shoulder and entwined with red strings dotted with small, silver bells. On his ageless face was fury.

"I will not suffer this murderer be spared from execution just because he is the king's _servant_!" Uruki spat the words out, and behind him, his brethren echoed his enraged protests.

Kaname remembered. They stood at the opposite sides of the battlefields then. He, with his small rag-tag allies of other purebloods, outcasts among their own kind, and humans turned vampire hunters. On the other side was Uruki and the majority of the vampire race, eager to turn all human beings into slaves and livestock. Yet, for their sheer number, Kaname remembered how nearly all of them fell under his scythe and his gun, terrified when they realized he had finally found out what could kill them all.

He wondered if Uruki could remember, and recognize him.

Kaname raised his hand briefly, and the hall was silenced. Uruki turned to him now as he rose and let his hand fall back to his side. By the left side of the throne Sara Shirabuki perked up in her seat. Beside her, the Touma children only looked mildly interested. Kaname slowly descended the dais, and came to stand before his ancient opponent from the wars. There was no recognition in Uruki's eyes. Not yet.

"You seem to forget that it was your great-granddaughter, Shizuka, who attacked first."

Uruki's face was all hatred. He moved close, their foreheads almost touching. Two sets of crimson eyes looking into the other.

"Attacked because you murdered her husband," Uruki hissed.

"I murdered my uncle because he murdered my parents," Kaname replied in a hushed voice. "And for what? Because he could not accept my mother chose my father instead of him. And now your insipid descendant sympathizes with him, and gets herself killed in the process. Her entire fault."

Kaname moved away from the pale-haired pureblood and turned to the court at large.

"Is this what I am being made to see – that purebloods should have all the authority to decide the fate of servants, even if belong to another? The old monarchy was abolished because of this very detestable reason of absolute authority. The Senate was thought to bring balance, but it did not." He gave the faintest trace of a shrug. "And now I, my family, is restored to the throne to be the protector of something else. Am I being made to see that I must execute a servant - my own, nonetheless – because of a justice well-deserved? If this is so, then this monarchy is nothing but a farce, and I will not have any part in it."

Kaname turned crisply on his heels and faced Uruki again. "If Shizuka had any reason for vengeance, it was with me. She should have faced me herself. Apparently she does not have faith in our system and laws. That cannot be countenanced. And now she got herself killed."

The nobles exploded into an uproar of more arguments. Sara Shirabuki got to her feet, and unsure of whom to approach first, decided to sit back down. The Touma children were whispering among themselves, their gazes shifting from Kaname and to the Hiou family. Amid all the voices and gestures, Uruki stared at him. Kaname stared back, and slowly, recognition dawned in the other pureblood's eyes.

He turned his back to Uruki before the realization was birthed completely in the other's mind, turning again to the nobles. The arguments settled into uneasy silence.

"There will be no execution," said Kaname. "I have spoken."

"What about the sanctity of the purebloods?" one noble demanded.

"The hunters cannot be left to do as they please, Your Highness!" shouted another.

"Shizuka Hiou deserved it!" another voice.

"We must protect the purebloods! There is no other way we can co-exist with the hunters and humans!" Another.

_The only way you can co-exist is for us to be eradicated._

Kaname tuned out the voices again as he returned to sit on his chair. He clasped his hands together, and met Uruki Hiou's gaze. There was no mistaking the recognition in the other pureblood's eyes. Kaname looked back, allowing a faint smile to form on his lips.

_Yes, it's me. Woe to you all now I am awake. I will be unstoppable. I will kill us all._

Uruki drew himself up, and turned to his brethren. For what seemed like eternity they huddled together, arguing among themselves, until finally, Uruki led the way out of the hall himself, his pale-haired children all trailing after him. He did not look back, but Kaname could not mistake the aura he had left in the room – fear for his own life.

* * *

It was Yagari Toga who opened the cell. Zero had been napping on the bed at the far side of the room, when his master decided he'd had enough sleep and jolted him awake with an offending booted kick on the bed frame.

"Get up, you."

Zero pushed himself up off the bed, still shaking the drowsiness off his system. Yagari Toga grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, and lifted him a good two inches off the floor.

"Master, what-!"

"I knew there was something fishy about you that day Ichiru died in the school," Toga spoke up, his tone brooking no-nonsense. One angry blue eye looked closely at Zero, scrutinizing him. "You drank his blood, didn't you, Zero. Nobody bitten by a pureblood can stay sane this long, as if nothing had happened. You drank his blood. _Why did you drink his blood?_"

Zero wasn't given a chance to answer. Toga was speaking again, this time more hissing in his words.

"What the _fuck_ are you thinking, you stupid apprentice?" He snarled. "I thought you wanted to _kill_ him! I thought you wanted to kill him, even if it meant you degrading; you promised you'd take him down with you to hell! What are you doing, drinking his blood? Have you not learned _anything_ from me about purebloods? You don't drink off a pureblood without any consequence, Zero! You know why their blood isn't used for blood tablets, huh? Huh? That's because they can fucking degenerate anyone they get their blood into! The more you drink of their blood, the more subservient you are to their will, until nothing of you remains, except an empty shell eager to please, eager to obey, even if you're asked to take your own fucking life!"

Toga then gave him a hard thump on the chest before letting him slide back down on the bed. Zero clutched the hurting area with a hand; sure a bruise would be there in a matter of minutes. In the meantime, his mentor was now pacing around his cell.

"You didn't answer the fucking question." Toga yelled at him. "_Why you fucking drank his blood, Zero, goddamn it, answer me_!"

But what would he say? That he wanted that thick, red blood? That he wanted it so much, just thinking of it would now make him want, make his throat dry? That he would kill – he knew he could kill – just to have it, even a drop? That he drank it, all of it, because it was given willingly to him? What would he say that would be acceptable to Yagari Toga? What could he say that would convince his mentor he was not sliding into oblivion by his own doing?

"I didn't want to degenerate. I can't kill him as Level E," Zero decided it was the best answer he could give. Though the truth of the last statement, he wasn't so sure anymore.

Toga was staring him down, and Zero met his mentor's gaze squarely, almost defiantly.

"….you drank his blood, of course, only once?" Toga spat the question out. "Just once, just a drop, is enough to save you from falling into End. You know this."

"…Yes." Zero had never before in his entire life lied to his parents, his twin and to his master. But now, by the looks of it, he would have to start piling lie after lie against the people dear to him. For their sake, yes. Never mind him in all of this. But Zero knew they could not, could never know the truth. "Just once."

"And how did he give it?" Toga demanded. "You're never the person to do any asking."

_He tricked me into drinking it._

"When he arrived. The same evening, I went up to my room after prefect duty with a vial of blood waiting on my desk. The window was open. The bat flew away when I got there." Even as the words escaped Zero's lips, he could remember the flash of the Artemis under the stoplight flickering orange. He could remember the pain of a hunter weapon against his flesh. And he could remember the strong, sweet scent of his master's pure blood. The rushing thickness of it all sliding down his throat, as he drank…

"He gave it that easily?" Even then Toga sounded skeptical. Zero chose not to answer; just looked at his mentor steadily. "I wonder what he had in mind. Bout of regret? Conscience, perhaps?"

"I don't know," Zero replied, which was probably the only truth he could give. Until now, he didn't know what Kaname was thinking.

"What the hell happened with the Shizuka fiasco?" Toga asked next. "It's connected to Ichiru's death somehow, wasn't it?"

"She thought I killed her husband," Zero replied.

"You did, correct?"

"He killed Ichiru. That was reason enough."

Toga grunted at that and sat down beside him. "And then she suddenly assaulted you in your apartment. You know you can't return to the same address. It was one hell of a damage control; I doubt the people in the corresponding departments don't want to see your face right now." He chuckled a little, and Zero was relieved by the tentative shift of topic.

"But where did you go after getting hit by the car? We couldn't find you for a week."

_He took me somewhere with lots of dead trees, mountains, aqueducts and a frozen lake._

"Bats," Zero answered. "The next thing I knew I was by this industrial zone of Verdeen City. I didn't call because I thought I might be followed." He paused and looked at his hands. "Healing was hell. Bones snapping back into place. My internal organs squirming as if something alive different from me as they repaired themselves."

_He bit me. And the next thing I knew, he was on top of me, drained me to an inch of my life, and made me know pleasure I have never felt before._

"Pain from all sides."

_He was moving against me, moving, moving, I couldn't take it._

"I just wouldn't die, master."

_And then, agony before release. I felt like I could die from pleasure._

"I just wouldn't die."

_He laughed at me, saying it was too soon. _

Neither of them spoke for a while. But Zero was sure his mentor was watching him. Toga perked up when footsteps sounded, and Zero rose when Kaien Cross and his parents entered the opened cell. In Kaien Cross's hand was a letter formerly sealed. Zero recognized the orchid coat of arms on the red wax.

"Cleared of all charges," Kaien said. "But you can't go back to school, or your old address."

Zero already knew all of these things. Kaname had explained to him everything he could expect. He had to keep away from his own parents for now, and suggest to the association to give them office work, if that wasn't done already. Zero would continue reporting for work in the hunter's association, but he couldn't let his whereabouts be known easily. Which meant…

"Mom and dad?" asked Zero, turning to Kaien.

"Office, for the both of them, starting now. We can't risk you all. Even your cousins, aunts and uncles will be given less hunt orders."

Zero nodded and didn't say anything else just as his mother sat down beside him.

"Why don't you stick to office work too?" she said, her voice concerned as she cupped his cheek and made her look at him. Zero couldn't meet her gaze. He could lie to his mentor, but to his mother, no. She would see through him. She would see, and she would know he went through a whole lot more than what he was telling. And he would not be able to live with himself if she found out.

"Me?" He chuckled softly, looking at his mother. "Office? I'd sleep…"

And then she pulled him to her in a hug, and kissed his hair. "You can't go out to hunt. What if they find you? What if they sneak up on you? I will not allow it. Stay with us here, we can all go to office together. Never mind if we all get bored."

Zero relaxed into his mother's hold, a sick feeling rising in his gut. "I can't risk you and dad. I can't be too close."

"But you will do office work!"

"I will. But I can't stay in the same house right now, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, mama."

She let him go. Kaien Cross looked at him, and gave a jerk of his head toward the open cell door. "Well let's go. No use for you remaining here when you've been acquitted. But I can't assure you the vampires were happy."

They all exited the cell, with Zero leaving last. Kaito was waiting outside, leaning on the wall with his arms crossed. For a brief second their gazes met.

For the first time in his life, Zero looked away.

* * *

By the world train, the trip would take him two hours. By the train stop he would get a taxi, and the drive would last for twenty minutes to the small town. From the small town he would go north, picking up the dirt path when the town's cobblestone ended, and he would follow it, until all the pine trees would give way for the dead ones. Walking on he would pass the aqueduct, and further northward he would see the mansion's roofing, and he would be standing in front of the vast but quiet house, with its windows curtained like closed eyes. Behind the house he would see the faint outline of mountains if the clouds were relenting. The frozen lake would be beautiful especially against the sunset, the ice would be glimmering like a mirage, and if you took a moment you would wonder if the lake was there at all. Later on, Zero would remember the trip, the rides to take, and the path of pines giving way for dead ones. Later, he would remember the aqueduct, and the quiet house would be there. But when that time came, he knew nobody would be waiting inside, except for memories.

His shoes crunched against the dry needles strewn on the path that led up to the front door. There was no movement from any of the curtained windows even as Zero led himself toward the door. The doorknob was cold against his hand, and he turned it and let himself in. The house was quiet and neat, dim against the setting sun. But there was a fire in the fireplace, and opened magazines were abandoned on the table, as well as a half-emptied cup of tea. He stepped into the landing and walked toward the magazines, and picked one up to read. It was a magazine about wildlife and explorations, with beautiful photos on glossy pages.

"It went well, I hope?"

His senses tingled with the sound of the voice, and he didn't turn around, just grunted to say that yes, it went well. Zero would strain his ears, but he would never be able to hear a sound of Kaname's footsteps.

"Good. I hope it went better than my end, at least."

Zero closed the magazine and finally turned to face the pureblood. Kaname was clad in a deep auburn dress shirt coupled with well-pressed khakis. His master dressed casually at home, almost forgetfully even. He was barefoot this evening.

"Seiren isn't around," Kaname continued as he picked up his cold tea. "So I'm afraid there's no dinner."

"You can't cook, can you?" Zero said, watching the other man's almost effeminate grace.

"No, I can't," Kaname replied matter-of-factly. "Me plus a kitchen equals disaster."

"Then show me the kitchen."

Kaname bore his teacup with him and led him to the right wing of the mansion, and to the expansive, minimalist modern kitchen. Zero was in his element when either in a hunt, or in a kitchen. He moved around with purpose; checking out the pantry and taking out a chicken from the fridge. He chopped up some vegetables and stuffed the chicken, and was soon having it baking up in the oven. Kaname watched all this seated on the counter.

"Useless lazy bum of a pureblood," Zero muttered as he watched the chicken bake.

"You do realize I rarely dine on human food," Kaname replied. "So there was no need for me to learn how to cook."

"Yeah, and you lot have a battalion of servants to do things for you," Zero remarked.

"Correct."

The silence settled between them, and Zero decided to let it remain for a few minutes. He shifted his senses to the expanse of the Kuran manor, and he could tell protections, charms and seals in place here as well. In fact there was an intricate web of traps and defenses at work here. He would have to spend years studying them all.

Abruptly he turned and turned to the barefooted vampire sitting on the counter clutching a teacup. Zero closed the distance between them in quick steps.

"I'm thirsty," he spoke.

Kaname raised a perfect eyebrow. "Well now, aren't you being a cocky little bastard, coming up to me and asking for blood like that?"

"I'm thirsty," Zero repeated.

"I'm not charitable tonight, so fuck off," Kaname snapped back. "Go out and hunt."

"Fuck off, huh?" Zero murmured, moving close and catching Kaname's lips with his own. The scent of blood and roses was there again, and Zero liked it and wanted it, basking in it. He pressed closer, and Kaname softly kissed him back. He felt impatient at the lack of response from his master, and at another time he would have been startled with himself and how he was behaving, eager for the attention of this dark-haired pureblood sitting on the kitchen counter.

There was a crash as the teacup and saucer fell from Kaname's slack fingers and onto the floor, the china shattering into pieces, the leftover tea staining the tiles a sepia brown. Zero pulled the pureblood to him; lifting Kaname off the counter with his arms around his master's waist. Reluctantly tearing his lips off his master's own; Zero had them both on the kitchen floor. His purple eyes had made way for red, and he was about to bite into Kaname's tempting neck when the pureblood gave him a crisp, back-handed slap that made his skull creak and blood trickle down his left ear. But the pain was welcome, and the scent of his own blood roused Zero's senses further, intoxicating him.

"I'm not charitable tonight, I said," Kaname hissed softly; giving Zero a shove and topping, his free hand already working quick to undo Zero's fly. "Do not make me repeat myself."

A soft, strangled cry escaped Zero's lips as Kaname had him in his mouth. The pureblood worked easily and quickly with his tongue, coaxing the pale-haired hunter up with hot little flicks, tiny sucks and nips. The teasing gave way for delicious sucking, and Zero, being driven nuts with the pleasure of it; spilled with a surprised gasp.

Kaname drew back, a white trail of cum still by the left corner of his mouth. "You seriously do not have an ounce of self-control. You spill too soon. So boring. I don't want to fuck someone who gives me an easy time."

He made to move away, but Zero wasn't about to let him leave so soon. He sat up quickly and pulled the pureblood into a heated kiss, his own tongue tasting and exploring Kaname's mouth, relishing their combined tastes. He wanted to bite; he wanted Kaname's blood, he wanted it so bad, but the pureblood dodged all of his attempts to draw blood by pushing him, pulling him by the hair and shoving him away enough not to land a bite or a nip. Frustration built up inside Zero, rising steadily with Kaname's blocking.

"Eager little hunter," Kaname laughed huskily; dodging another attempt of Zero to draw blood by nipping the hunter's lower lip hard. "You'd have to learn more than that if you want my blood." He laughed some more, and his laughter infuriated Zero even further, who by now grasped fistfuls of Kaname's clothes. With a ripping sound Zero tore off Kaname's expensive dress shirt, exposing the other's well-toned but extremely pale upper body.

"Tsk, now he's destroying my clothes too," Kaname frowned as he grasped Zero by the neck and kept him at a distance. "Good god, I've created a fucking monster." Pausing, he mulled the words over in his head and laughed some more. "Fucking monster. How appropriate, hmm, Zero?"

Snarling, Zero grabbed Kaname's arm and forced it back with a burst of strength. Before the pureblood could stall him again, he lunged forward and bit hard into Kaname's neck, and the flow of blood greeted him, and he dove into it desperately. Kaname's claws dug into Zero's scalp but Zero didn't care, not even when Kaname's grip started to draw blood.

"That's…" Kaname parted his lips, and just like that, stopped resisting, letting his arms fall back.

It was Zero's first time to have sex with someone. And he would not remember all of it; like many of his memories he would only recall bits and pieces. He would remember moving eagerly, taken over by heat, need and thirst, his eyes would be flaming red, and his blood mingled with Kaname's, there on the kitchen floor. He doubted though that Kaname had a good time of it what with his clumsy ways, but nothing, not even a flinch, crossed the pureblood's ageless face. And when Zero's lust waned down seemingly an age later when he gave his thick, hot and white release, the two of them would be in each other's arms, a perfectly bloody mess.

Zero moved first, pushing himself up on his arms; looking down at Kaname beneath him. Kaname stared back, but there was no teasing smile on his lips, not even a hint of pleasure at all with what had just transpired between them. His neck was healing and caked with dry blood. He raised a hand and traced Zero's lips with a finger.

"When I turned you," Kaname spoke. "I was sure you were the last person on this earth that would be boring. I decided you had strength, and you would not lose yourself easily if I gave you my blood. But it seems I'm wrong." A pause. "Get yourself out of my body and get off me."

Zero did as he was told, a different kind of emptiness welling inside him. He lay back down on the kitchen, his eyes on the spotless ceiling.

"This will be the last time you will have my blood, no matter how thirsty you are. Until you regain your goddamn wits, there will be no blood for you, I swear it, or I will kill you with my own two hands." Kaname could have brandished the Artemis again and struck him with it.

Kaname was on his feet. "I hate sex sometimes. It leaves a god-awful mess and it hurts." He exited the kitchen, and Zero was sure he was going to the nearest bathroom.

* * *

The sun rose in the east bringing with a light drizzle and the smell of damp earth and leaves shooting out of the ground. Kaname left the house to Seiren's care, leaving just as sunrise greeted his eyes. He opened the red umbrella he brought with him and put himself under its shade, and he walked down the path toward the small town a little ways from the Kuran manor, humming an ancient song he was sure nobody now remembered.

Zero was still asleep back in the house; as with young vampires, the languor hit his system deep, especially with his exertions the night before. Kaname couldn't blame him. But he couldn't let his thoughts dwell too long on his little hunter; he had plans to set in motion today, plans he had formed long ago. Reaching the town he waited and hailed a taxi, and bought himself a ticket onto the world train.

The trip lasted four hours, and another four hours on bat's wings, until finally Kaname reached the place – a deep crevasse in the bowels of a mountain range, where an ancient castle lay, hidden and secret. Kaname seated himself on a convenient rock, and waited, his umbrella open and shielding him from the sun.

At around four in the afternoon, there was movement. With his eyes he could see the movement of a thousand small black widow spiders spilling out of one of the chimneys of Castle Hanadagi. He waited, motionless, until all the spiders had gone and silence reigned in the castle again. After another hour of waiting, Kaname folded his umbrella and let it drop to the ground as he dissolved into a thousand bats, and made for the open gate and door of the castle.

He reformed just in time to see the Hanadagi progenitor at the top of the grand staircase of his home, in the final minutes of a feeding. The unfortunate victim was undoubtedly a descendant and servant, judging by her tanned skin. Her own master had drained her dry, and as Kaname watched, she turned into ashes, slipping from her master's fingers.

Hanadagi had just became aware of his presence, and the newly-awoken pureblood looked up just as Kaname ascended the staircase to meet him. He had a heart gouged out, and he was a dead man already.

"You-!"

Artemis's scythe blade swung quick, and loped off Hanadagi's head cleanly off his shoulders. The headless body twitched in its spasm of death, the cracks appearing all over it, until it finally shattered on its own, the shards falling onto the floor by Kaname's shoes.

Hanadagi was another old-timer from the wars. He had shared Uruki Hiou's ideal of the human race as servants and livestock. He had also managed to decapitate Kaname once. Kaname still remembered the pain of healing a severed head back on. Now he had returned the favor, but there was no healing for Hanadagi this time. Kaname never forgot a wrong, after all.

Kaname turned his gaze and found a black widow left behind. He let the smile come to his lips.

"You're next, but I'm not telling when."

He crushed the spider underfoot.


	9. Chapter 9

**.09**

He could remember standing in the middle of a grassy field. Ahead of him, he could see the brick walls of a small town, and beyond the walls he could see red roofs and brick houses, low structures all, the town only dotted by a few two-floor buildings. He could remember the chimneys sprouting tendrils of white smoke; he could remember seeing women clad in austere dark shirts and skirts, with bandanas covering their faces. Some had baskets of harvested vegetables and fruits on their backs. Somewhere an old crone was talking to a young boy.

A young dark-haired woman was walking on her way home, beside her was a young man too, also dark-haired, and bearing her basket of harvest. She was smiling up at him, and from where Zero stood in the grassy field, he could clearly see that she was heavy with child. Their conversation stopped when snowflakes started falling from the sky, and everyone in the town, Zero included, looked up incredulously at the sky where the sun was shining, but snow was falling.

And then the scenery changed.

The town was there again, but this time, he knew the people had fallen on hard times. The grass was gone, only to be replaced by dry, cracked earth. The sun shone furiously above Zero's head, and from where he stood he could see that the brick houses lacked much of their old cheer. No smoke was coming out from chimneys. Rafters were decaying. There were fewer people out on the streets, and they looked gaunt and troubled and worn. Their baskets were empty. The children playing outside looked emaciated and sick.

A boy of about ten exited one of the many brick houses. He wore a dirty pair of trousers, worn shoes, a worn cap on his head. His jacket looked short in the sleeves for him. Zero watched as the boy moved curiously about; keeping to the shade of the houses' roofs, never joining the other children in their play, content as he was to watch. He climbed up a wooden barrel and sat there, watching the other emaciated children play with their old toys.

Zero felt like he knew that boy from before. And, as if sensing his scrutiny, the boy lifted his gaze and looked at him, and Zero found he had crimson eyes.

The scenery flickered again.

It was nighttime this time around, and snow was falling. From where he stood Zero could hear the townsfolk shouting in anger, and as he watched, he saw an angry mob round the corner, bearing rifles, pitchforks, flaming torches. They spoke in a language he couldn't understand, and they came to this brick house, and some of the people started throwing things toward the windows, shattering glass.

A man emerged from the house. Zero took a long while to recognize him; he had changed so much – he looked worn and troubled, and he had a beard and moustache now. He was trying to stall the people; trying to convince them of something…and one man from the throng punched him and the man fell down. There was a cry from inside the house and a woman emerged, scrambling toward her husband. From behind her trailed her son, the boy with the crimson eyes Zero knew so well.

The townsfolk were ruled by anger. The crowd parted to reveal an older woman crying in anguish, carrying the corpse of a young girl in her arms. The girl's unseeing eyes were open, and there was a big chunk of her neck missing. Zero understood. He watched, unable to move, as the townsfolk chased the couple and their boy out of their town. They threw stones, and he wanted to help, shield them somehow, but he remained rooted to his spot, only seeing, seeing everything, but unable to even lift a finger.

They fell by his feet. Zero stood there, a sick feeling in his gut, his heart pounding, his eyes on the bloody corpses of the man and his wife. Their child lay motionless underneath them, and for a moment Zero thought the boy died as well, but…

A twitch. The boy, bloodied as he was, moved and slowly sat up. He tried to wake his mother up first. And then he tried to rouse his father next. He kept trying for a long time, saying _mama, papa _– but his parents would never move again. The boy would keep crying for a long time, and Zero would watch him. And then he would look up at Zero, and their eyes would meet. The boy would get to his feet unsteadily, and crying quietly, wrap his arms around Zero's waist.

The scene changed once more.

Zero was standing in the middle of a barren wasteland. All around him the earth was reduced to a gray desert, with the ruins of old buildings jutting out of the ground, their windows long blank and broken. His senses tingled, and he turned, and saw distinctly the outline of a man huddled on top of a ruin of what had once been a hotel. The vampire was humming to himself, and he dropped off from the ledge, landing perfectly on his feet upon the sandy earth. His coat was in tatters and his dark hair was matted, but no filth in the world could ever change his face.

He walked toward Zero, and came to a stop in front of him. Zero opened his mouth to say the name, but a woman's voice beat him to it.

_Kaname. Yes, that will be your name; the name of my hometown. But you won't need a name, would you?_

The memory of his master half-turned, and behind him Zero could see a cloaked woman standing with her servant.

_Will you join us? We're looking for immortals like ourselves. Beings who would not age, nor die, nor suffer sickness._

His master only watched the woman with faint interest. And then he would walk on, hands in his coat pocket, humming the old song once more. The woman chuckled softly.

_I'm sure I'll see you again, Kaname. In the meantime, try to stay alive and stop being so kind._

The scene flickered.

He was by the outskirts of a small but thriving village this time. Kaname was standing by the doorway of a vast house – the biggest in that place – keeping to the shade while watching the people pass him by. A young boy with his father and a cartful of harvest stopped and greeted him. After that, a young woman leading an elderly woman by the hand would greet Kaname next. The woman would explain that her mother was sick, and needed medicine. Kaname would reach into his coat pocket and give her a small glass vial, with red liquid within.

_Just a drop. Every evening before she goes to bed,_ Kaname would say.

The young woman would kiss his hand and thank him profusely and lead her mother away. In the meantime the sun would reach its peak, and Kaname would glance upward at it, and withdraw inside the shade of his vast but empty house.

Another scene.

It almost felt like déjà vu, Zero would think to himself, as he watched the townsfolk gather outside their lord's house. This time, Kaname would emerge even before the people cast the first stone, and he would study their faces, and leave of his own accord. Zero watched his retreating back with confusion.

_Why won't he strike? He could kill them all if he wanted. After what he'd suffered at the hands of humans, why won't he strike?_

Another scene. Zero was in a small, shady house. The woman was back again, and she was there, watching Kaname, who was unconscious on the bed. She would shake her head at him almost irritably, and she would pull her hood down. She had platinum blonde hair swathed with thin, long braids. Her eyes were a pale sea green, but when she parted her lips Zero could see the tips of her fangs. Kaname would wake up, and would stare up at the woman, confused.

_You're too nice for your own good, Kaname. It's because you won't find servants to give you blood. Just one or two would do, you know? People you trust, people whom you hold dear…or people who won't mind giving you company for the long road ahead._

She offered her wrist to him, as Zero watched.

_But we have problems, Kaname. I need your strength, you who's eldest of us all. But for now you need my blood. Drink._

* * *

Zero understood how deeply Kaname loved the woman. The memories flitted by him in flickers, like a candlelight coming alive in the darkness, then being snuffed out, then flickering alive again. The memory this time was a peaceful one. Kaname was walking beside the woman, holding her hand, while with her free hand she touched her growing belly.

_It worries me,_ Kaname told her.

_It worries me too,_ she answered. _But our kind won't die from childbirth. I'm looking forward to our son and daughter._

_Twins_, Zero thought. At that moment, the myth of vampire and hunter twins came to his mind. _Neither can live_. Only one would survive. And for a moment he felt a small fear creep up his spine. The woman must have known it too; there was this grim set to her eyes and chin as she walked beside Kaname, but she would not voice her real worry to him.

_I wasn't worried about that,_ Kaname told her. _I'm worried how members of the court are thinking. You can see it on how they procure willing humans for themselves. You can see it on how they shout at their servants. You can see it on how they get rid of those who displease them. That's what worries me._

_I know,_ she would answer. _If this keeps up, we must do something._

A flicker.

Kaname was now sitting at full court, and the nobles and purebloods argued all around him. But Zero could tell he was distracted and not himself; his thoughts were elsewhere – to his wife currently giving birth in one of the lowest basements of the mansion. A young noble, blonde and green-eyed and sporting ruby stud earrings, bent close to whisper something to Kaname's ear. Zero watched as Kaname gave an impatient toss of his head and get to his feet, instantly silencing the court.

_What we need is co-existence,_ he announced. _Is it really needed to conquer our human neighbors?_

A pale-haired pureblood – a Hiou – spat on the floor. _Humans have never treated us kindly! Many of our kin were discarded by their own families! We must not forget all the wrongs done to us!_ He turned to Kaname now looked at him with disdain. _You of all people must know how humans fear us, and how humans hate us, my lord Kuran. Even though you were a child when the townsfolk stoned your parents to death—_

He didn't get to finish that statement, because Kaname had moved faster than anyone else and struck the Hiou pureblood, sending him flying across the room and smashing into the wall.

_I do not forget_, Kaname said, his voice shaking with anger. _But this is not the way to settle our differences; violence will not get us anywhere-_!

But the nobles and many of purebloods rose up against him, and Zero watched as Kaname lost control of his subjects. In his mind, Zero knew where this would lead. He knew…

_Us._

* * *

Only one of their twins survived, a boy. Their daughter was stillborn, and it cast a pall on what could have been a faint glimmer of happiness in that time of trouble. They were both quiet as they watched their son sleep, and Zero could sense something changed with the woman with the pale hair and braids.

_They respect us, which is why they didn't kill us,_ she told Kaname in a hushed voice. _But now we are captives._

_I cannot just stand by and watch,_ Kaname told her, and in his eyes Zero could see unspeakable grief. _I will not do nothing. _He rose and paced as his wife watched. _I will not let them do as they please._

_What will you do, Kaname…?_ She asked. _You know we cannot die…_

_We can die._ He looked at her. _The only thing that can kill us is ourselves._

_How can it be done?_

_It can be done. I have experimented a long time ago. I tried to see if I can…and I found out that…_

_That…?_

Zero watched and listened as he told her. He understood that Kaname wanted to sacrifice himself. But his wife had other plans, and at that moment, as Zero listened and looked, a secret was born inside her mind. She had lost the will to live when they told her her daughter was dead, and there was nothing, not even Kaname or their son, would make her change her mind.

* * *

She went to the gathering humans on her own, and told them about Kaname's solution. At first they wouldn't believe her, until she asked to be led toward the furnace where they were making their weapons, and tore her own heart out and let it fall into the molten metal. She didn't last long after that, weakened as she was from bearing and giving birth to twins; and when Kaname got there, she had long been reduced to ashes. He turned to the humans then, and let himself bleed, and he made all of them, even the children, drink his blood in toxic amounts. He'd hoped he would die from draining himself, but he had not been weakened inside prior unlike his wife, and as Zero watched Kaname lay recovering, cursing himself and his ability to heal with each passing moment.

It was the second time someone his master held so close died while he, unfortunately, remained resolutely alive. Zero was no stranger to the feeling, but to witness the magnitude of it for Kaname, he wasn't sure how his master was even managing it.

He watched as Kaname forged Artemis and Bloody Rose; watched as led the war against his own kind. The purebloods were struck with terror with the knowledge that they could know be killed, and as more hunters were inducted and given weapons, the more the vampires retreated, until at last the wars were over, and Zero felt sick with what he had seen, all those deaths and suffering and agony in the battlefield of memory.

Kaname's son was a little more than a toddler now by this memory in time. Zero pitied him, the poor child, as he watched his grief-stricken father retreat into the coffin, with no intent to wake; no consideration at all for him, to help him learn to rule. Zero could not understand how Kaname could stomach leaving his own child.

As the stone coffin was sealed, the little vampire boy quietly grabbed hold of his nanny's skirt and buried his face into the cloth, and Zero knew he was crying.

* * *

Darkness. There was nothing in this void, wherever this was, and Zero felt like everything of him had turned to stone from long misuse and neglect. He was lying down, as far as he could tell, but a languor attached to his system so deep and hard, that he wasn't sure if he was awake at all. Somewhere in the dark he could hear the creak of a door opening, but his mind was muddled with sleepiness, to understand.

Slowly, light entered his vision as the lid was lifted off his coffin. Above him stood a pureblood with mismatched eyes, and in his hand he clutched a bundle of cloth dripping blood. He let the same blood drip down onto where Zero lay, and slowly, sleep started leaving his system, and to his horror Zero watched as the vampire tore up the bundle of cloth – which wasn't just a bundle of cloth, but had a living babe in it – and give him the flesh—

With a gasp and a burst of strength, Zero roused himself from his slumber, his right arm automatically reaching out from instinct and grabbing the person waking him by the neck. He gripped the person's neck hard, and slowly his vision started to clear, and he was aware of his surroundings.

He was sitting on a four-poster bed, and by the corner of his eyes he could see the setting sun's orange light filtering through the curtains. His hand was clamped around Seiren's neck, his grip tight enough so that her veins started to show, but for everything, Seiren remained still and waited for him to realize she wasn't there to kill him.

"Awake then?" she murmured in her cool voice. "Perhaps now you can let me go. I am no threat to you."

Zero let go of her as if he had been scalded. He was sweaty and panted like he had just ran ten thousand miles and back. His mind swirled with his dream – was it a dream? – the bits and pieces of memories flitting through his thoughts in a wild jumble. He buried his face into his hands and slapped himself several times.

Seiren watched him for a moment before she poured him a glass of water and added two blood tablets in it.

"Blood is pleasure in lying with someone," she chimed. "But too much blood can bring with it unwanted things you would rather keep private, or explain yourself."

He realized that she knew what he had done. He looked at her, but her face remained passive, reflecting nothing.

"It's for your own good," she murmured. "You have to get a hold of yourself. Who knows, maybe he'll let you share his blood again when you do."

Zero did not know if he still needed to feel properly embarrassed. Here was Seiren, knowing he had sex with their master yesterday. His scent must have given him away. Or maybe she saw the mess they made in the kitchen. Zero couldn't remember if he'd cleaned up. He just blacked out when Kaname left him for the bathroom.

"Vampires smell everything out, no matter how much you hide; it is a rather troublesome ability of our kind; we never really have complete privacy unlike humans," Seiren explained. "There is no use making excuses. Or to explain anything to me."

"Thank you," Zero said hoarsely, looking at her.

She smiled. "I will make you breakfast. Or dinner. Get dressed, and go to the kitchen."

* * *

When Zero got to the kitchen, everything was clean, and a plate of svíčková na smetaně waited for him on the counter, along with a glass of chilled Bordeaux. Seiren was by the sink, washing something. Zero hesitated, sat himself on one of the bar stools, and started to eat. However he found that he had not much appetite, and soon put his knife and fork down. Seiren turned to him with a curious expression.

He decided to be out with the question, since she already knew things about him that he could not even tell his own family about.

"Were you like me?" he asked.

"Like you?" She repeated. "Yes and no. Yes, I was once human. Master Kaname found me in an isolated village far in the east, dying from yellow fever. Perhaps he took pity on me. But no, I am not a lover. I am a servant, and have always been just a servant."

_Lover._

Zero turned to his half-finished food and poked it lightly with his fork.

"What do you know about him?" Zero asked, quietly.

Seiren studied him for a while, and Zero felt that he would never get an answer. But she smiled at him.

"More than you know, for sure."

* * *

Zero arrived at the headquarters at around 9 in the evening. It was late, but hunters had never kept normal civilian schedules anyway, so nobody really cared about it. He almost groaned when he realized he would probably be stuck here doing office work when Kaito rounded the corner looking urgent and displeased, and grabbed him by the scruff of his jacket and pulled him along.

"What the-!"

"No time for protests, we just had information that Sara Shirabuki's gone to a girl's college for supper," Kaito snarled. "So you're going with me, and I'll explain to master later that I got nobody else suited for the job."

And so he had no choice but to tag along. Kaito took him to one Dahlia Girls' College, and for a second Zero was reminded of Cross Academy's sprawling campus and ridiculously detailed uniform. He also remembered Ichiru too, but he pushed the thoughts back in his mind. He had work to do, and work he was going to focus on until it was over.

They had just entered the school grounds when Zero stopped on his tracks, lifted his head, and sniffed the air.

"Too late," he told Kaito before he pumped his legs and ran off.

Kaito's protest was drowned out when Zero jumped from the walkway bridge and landed on his feet by the pavement below. He straightened up, and following his senses, he navigated through the cobblestone paths and round the buildings until he came upon the music hall. Sara Shirabuki had just exited the building and opened her parasol. She was all smiles as she turned to the besotted, newly-turned girls behind her and gave them a farewell wave. She walked, and Zero walked too, a hand already reaching inside his shirt for Bloody Rose.

She stopped just as Zero had Bloody Rose against her pale neck. She looked up at him with her calculating blue eyes, and she chuckled softly.

"I'm afraid you can't hunt me today, my dear hunter puppy," she spoke, her voice cooing, almost disdainful. "I turned them with their full consent and knowledge of the consequences, and I have promised to look after them until the very end. Go look for prey elsewhere." So saying she sidestepped him and continued to walk, but after five steps, she stopped again.

"You…" she said, and Zero turned to her. "Absolutely reek of Kuran blood. I wonder what he has in mind for you. So rare for a master to take care of a servant so much." She laughed, and she sounded like bells chiming. "Perhaps he…ah, but who knows?"

Zero could not do anything except watch his prey walk off. But Sara Shirabuki stopped again, and eyed him.

"Do you know why he bit you, when he could have just forcefully taken that gun from you and left you when he had?" She laughed softly. "Did you even bother asking him, or knowing?"

He stared at her, and his grip on Bloody Rose tightened.

_Why?_

* * *

He arrived home at around 5 in the morning. The house was dark, but Zero could hear someone playing the piano from the hall. He stepped in and found Kaname still awake, playing notes on the grand piano by lamplight. Unsure of whether he should approach, Zero remained by the door, until Kaname finished the piece.

"You smell of blood," Zero said in a hushed voice. "What happened to you?"

"I, Zero," Kaname replied as he poured himself some water and let tablets dissolve in it. "Got attacked on the way home. A greeting from the little brat who called himself the head of the Touma family, you see. He turned his bats into lances and wounded me."

"An act of defiance," Zero remarked.

Kaname chuckled and gave an offhand gesture. Under the lamplight, Zero thought he looked wearier than ever before.

"It doesn't matter," Kaname said. "He has been punished."

Kaname now fixed him with his gaze. Both of them were quiet, and Zero remembered everything that the blood had showed him in his sleep.

_That little crying boy. How could you leave him just like that?_

He wanted to ask the question. He wanted to ask a lot of questions at that moment, but he kept his mouth shut. Zero dropped his gaze, clenched his fists, and unclenched them again, slowly.

"Do you have anything to say to me, Zero?" Kaname asked, and he had now started playing on the piano again. Something from Mozart.

"Nothing," Zero answered. "Nothing at all."


	10. Chapter 10

**.10**

Zero was sure he would not find or remember a quieter house than the Kuran manor. The upper floor and the attic was shut off (meaning there was no electricity there), because his and Seiren's rooms were in the ground floor. All ten rooms in the second floor were either locked, vacant or the furniture within were covered with white cloth. Kaname spent most of his time in the library, and Seiren said he retired mostly in one of the basements. Nobody bothered to go up the attic.

The house was old and full of memories; Zero could not shake off that feeling whenever he sat alone by the couch staring at the fireplace, or every time he arrived from work. He rarely saw Kaname moving about, too. Kaname would usually lock himself up in the library, or he was off running the vampire society someplace. The few moments they would meet almost always passed in silence. Zero would be sitting beside his master, who would be busy reading a book or playing chess with himself, and would not bother to talk. For the life of him Zero did not know what to talk about, either. He wasn't sure Kaname would be happy if he revealed that his blood showed his intimate memories.

In those moments of quiet and silence, Zero took to just watching his master, whatever it was he was doing. He had never thought that he would manage to sit down quietly beside the man who changed his life forever, yet here he was, oddly peaceful with the pureblood vampire. In his mind Zero wondered, what would Ichiru say if he were alive? What would his parents say? What would Yagari Toga and Kaito Takamiya say? Kaien Cross would probably be happy with him for being civilized.

Tonight Kaname was writing when he'd arrived. Zero hung his coat and went straight to the kitchen; he found food waiting and he understood that Seiren was around somewhere. A manor was too big for three vampires. Picking up the food, Zero made his way back to the hall and sat down beside his master. Kaname did not look up or greet him or ask him about his day at work, and Zero contented himself with eating his dinner in silence. The logs in the fireplace crackled softly against the flames.

When Zero rose to take his plate back to the kitchen for cleaning, he sensed his master shift, and by instinct, Zero stopped on his tracks and waited. Kaname was looking up at him with a calm expression on his ageless face, as if suddenly realizing he'd arrived.

"Ah, you're home," Kaname murmured.

"Been here for thirty minutes," Zero replied. "I finished dinner beside you."

"Did you? I didn't notice."

"You were busy."

"Was I?" Kaname allowed himself a soft laugh. "Is dinner good?"

"Seiren cooks great. Unlike someone I know who can't even open a can of sardines the human way."

Kaname smiled up at him. It was a smile Zero had never seen on a pureblood before – it was a smile of genuine amusement at his jab. In his mind Zero struggled to accept the fact that even purebloods could smile like that.

"Is that supposed to be an insult? You have to do better than that, Zero."

He did not bother replying and went to the kitchen and washed his plate. The house was so very quiet. For some reason, Zero wondered if a part of Yuuki Nakagawa ever remembered living in this house, with her biological vampire parents.

* * *

His day-off dawned without much of a promise. He woke up, fumbled for his phone and took a moment to call his parents and wish them good morning and told them he was doing fine. Zero sat up in bed, wondering what he could do. Then he decided to help Seiren with any chores she might have, and then remembered she was probably asleep for the day. This meant he could have all the work to himself, and that suited him just fine. Zero got out of bed and went out into the silent expanse of the Kuran manor.

Sunrises at this northern part of the world tended to be softer than anywhere else, and Zero went out onto the porch to actually watch one. His eyes stung briefly, but he blinked it away, and realized that it had been a while since he had watched an actual sunset. The clouds were a bit thick and low, but he thought they did not bring rain or snow. It was a cold and pale morning. Tiny drops of water clinging onto dead pine needles sparked with the morning light.

Zero pulled his jacket closer and decided to explore the manor grounds. His boots crunched against the pine needles on the earth, and the air was cold and a bit sharp as he inhaled. He rounded the manor and discovered several glass greenhouses way back, near the edge of the frozen lake. He had not seen the greenhouses when he'd first moved in, and he noticed them late. Hands in his pockets Zero walked toward the nearest one and finding it open, went inside.

The first greenhouse was mostly empty and was apparently used as a storeroom for gardening equipment and a myriad of earthen pots. There were several sacks of garden soil by the far end, all neatly piled on top of each other. Several huge cans of fertilizer were stacked neatly also, under several long wooden tables where trowels, shears and shovels were set as a haphazard lump.

The second greenhouse used to provide shelter for several ornamental plants and orchids, but when Zero got there, all that greeted him were wilted branches and decaying leaves in filthy pots. Untrimmed vines hung from the ceiling and they were dead too. It smelled like death in there, and Zero did not see it fit to linger.

The last greenhouse offered him something different – bushes upon bushes of blue roses were inside, all the plants in full health and thriving. The blooms were big and of a deep and vibrant hue of blue, and Zero understood the work and effort put to these plants. One rose was as big as his hands brought together. Their stalks were decorated with inch-long sharp thorns. A pair of abandoned working gloves was on the ground, beside some trowels and a garden shear.

He reached out a hand toward the nearest blue rose he could find and plucked it, but in the process got one of the nasty thorns embedding itself in his index finger. The drop of his blood welled up and dripped onto the earth, but Zero paid it no heed. He brought the rose close to his nose and lips, and it had a scent he knew so well and loved.

_All these roses are his, then,_ Zero thought as his eyelids lowered. What he knew of Kaname didn't permit him to imagine the pureblood spending hours in this greenhouse, wearing gloves, crouching down, putting fertilizer onto the earth and trimming the rosebushes. But there was no mistaking that the scent of all the roses in this place clung to Kaname, on his skin, on his hair, on his clothes – the scent stuck to him enough to mask the faint whiff of blood he always seemed to have. And Zero knew Kaname must spend hours, or even days, just inside this greenhouse.

_Blue roses symbolize impossible love._

The bit of information was something he remembered from his school days, when the boys of the Day Class would prepare their presents for their crushes and girlfriends come White Day. Ichiru always loved to give roses to girls he courted and dated, and he knew what each color meant and symbolized. Zero had never bothered with White Day; he had been too busy looking inward at his own private hell to care.

He put the rose he plucked down on a wooden table nearby, and picked up the abandoned gloves and trowel. He put the gloves on and looked about, and didn't take long to spot the sack of fertilizer. It had been used before, but was just carefully sealed. Zero went to it, and decided to begin working.

* * *

After tending to the blue roses, Zero decided to explore the Kuran manor next. Still holding the blue rose he'd picked, Zero went up to the second floor and checked out the rooms that weren't locked. Many were simply unused guest rooms, and store rooms. Every single one smelled musty and was dusty like hell, showing years of being unoccupied and unused. One room was clearly intended to be a baby's chambers. There was an old, antique crib there, but the sheets and pillows were stained and moth-eaten. There was a black pram by the corner, also dirty but looked unused. In the drawers there were baby clothes too, everything unused and neglected. By the nightstand Zero came upon a photo of a smiling Juuri Kuran sitting outside by a swing, and she was holding a parasol, while her free hand rested on her very pregnant belly.

Zero remembered the spiral of memory in his dream. Of him being stuck in a coffin, and a mismatched-eyed vampire pureblood opening his coffin. He remembered the bleeding bundle. He remembered the baby within it, helpless and beyond recovery, torn to pieces just to…

He looked around at the room with renewed perception. Whose room was this? Clearly Yuuki was not the only child of Haruka and Juuri. There was one other. That other one Rido Kuran had killed.

He decided then, that it was time to go to the basements.

* * *

The bulk of the Kuran manor lay underground. There was a network of mazes and passageways that Zero was sure extended for miles, even well into the human town down by the mountains. Most of the passages and corridors were well-made and well-lit with electric lamps, but after some hours of walking the walls and floors gave way to rough stonework, and Zero understood that these passages would lead somewhere either into the mountains, or to the human town. Some roughly-made passages were of damp earth, and it was a wonder they didn't cave in. Zero guessed these went under the great frozen lake, but he was not sure. The air underground was a bit pressed, but breathing was not a problem. Zero supposed it was an ancient charm woven around the place.

There were many rooms still here by the underground basements. All were as ornate and finely-built as the ones in the house itself, though by the look of things, Zero supposed that the underground rooms had seen occupation at least, unlike the chambers in the manor itself. One room had a particularly detailed ceiling, and on the floor were old children's books, and faint scents lingered in it. There was even some bit of ash in the fireplace.

Zero lingered briefly by the underground room, and went on to follow the hallway. He wondered how deep underground he was now, until he came to a flight of steps that descended further. He followed the steps, and came upon a narrower hallway lit with old-fashioned torches. The path extended forward, quite far, and he followed it silently, until he came to a massive set of double doors, emblazoned with the Kuran family crest of an orchid.

The doors gave way with an easy creak, and Zero found himself standing in a spacious, all white-marble underground mausoleum. The place was octagonal, the structure supported by the corners by massive Ionian pillars. There was a dais in the center of the place, and a cracked, gray marble sarcophagus with the Kuran crest on the side. The huge crack cut through the crest, as if splitting it into two from right to left.

The room carried the scent of blood and roses. Zero wondered if he had by chance come to the right place, and he walked toward the sarcophagus, ascending up at the steps of the dais.

His guess was correct. Kaname was inside, lying on his side, and asleep. It was odd, to say the least. If Zero remembered correctly Kaname had his own room by the first floor of the manor. Why would he choose to rest here in a stone box, with not even a pillow with him? Zero stood there in silence, watching his master sleep. This was the most vulnerable Zero had ever seen the pureblood; though his hunter training told him even the calmest scenarios could be unpredictable with vampires. Kaname was asleep all right, but he would have sharp senses, keen instincts and lightning reflexes.

The minutes trailed by in silence. Zero slowly raised a hand into his jacket, and drew Bloody Rose. After everything, this was the opportunity he had been waiting for. Chances like this would never come his way again, he was sure. He took another step closer to the marble sarcophagus, and lowered his hand; Bloody Rose's muzzle rested squarely against Kaname Kuran's left temple. Zero's finger was on the trigger.

_Just one shot to the head, like Shizuka Hiou. And another one to the heart. He wouldn't stand a chance, would he?_

Never mind if he wanted this man's blood. Never mind that he had been spending his last few days half-starved because he wanted Kaname's blood but could not have it. Never mind that they had been intimate several times already. Just one shot. And this bloody daze Zero got trapped into would be over. He would be himself again completely, with no tiny presence of Kaname inside his mind. His senses would stop tingling every time the pureblood was near. He would be _free_.

_Shoot him. Shoot him now._

His finger tightened on the trigger, but the pull didn't come. His arm shook. He gripped Bloody Rose so tightly his knuckles went white. But no shot was ever fired. Not a drop of Kaname's blood was spilled.

Slowly, Kaname Kuran cracked an eye open.

"You can't kill me, Zero."

_I can't._

Zero withdrew his gun and took a step back. Kaname stirred himself completely and sat up inside the sarcophagus, taking a moment to rub his eyes. Then he looked at Zero, who stared back, gun still in his hand.

"You know how the Blood Bond works," Kaname spoke in a hushed voice. "You can't kill your master. Even if you do, your death will follow soon afterward." A pause. "Would you like another shot then?" His hands reached up and unbuttoned his shirt, so that his chest was exposed. "Right here, by the heart. And another by the head, for good measure. I have a hunter sword beside me, and if you do succeed, you might also want to decapitate me with it before you go."

But Zero never raised his gun again. Kaname shook his head and buttoned up his shirt.

The silence between them extended, but Zero did not break it. Kaname heaved himself up from his marble box and sat by the edge.

"What brings you here?" he'd asked.

"There was another child," Zero answered. "Who was it?"

"Haruka and Juuri's son, named after me," Kaname replied just as nonchalantly. "Rido sacrificed him to revive me from this stone box." He tapped the edge of the sarcophagus lightly. "I was asleep here for such a long time. And yet, I remained a dry husk, dead and yet not. Rido brought me back, and so here I am, on a life stolen from an infant."

He wondered how Kaname could say it so calmly. Like he was just talking about the weather outside. There was no remorse at all, nor sadness.

"Yuuki's brother," Zero said without thinking.

A nod from Kaname. "Yes. Yuuki's brother."

"Did you mourn him?" Zero had to ask.

"Why would I mourn someone I did not even know?" was Kaname's reply.

"But you're alive because of that child."

"Do you honestly think I _enjoy_ being alive?"

"…You don't?"

"I don't. I retreated into the coffin precisely because I got sick of living."

Zero did not know what to make of the apparent heartlessness from Kaname. He supposed…

"Why did you turn me then?" Zero shifted the topic, remembering Sara Shirabuki's words. "Am I like this child, this descendant of yours? Am I for nothing?"

Kaname studied him closely. "I thought you would have made a fine weapon. You had Bloody Rose, and I thought that maybe…but no. In the end, I guess like everyone else of my kind, I just wanted someone to talk to."

"You could have talked to me," Zero said, hand clenching around Bloody Rose again. "Just talked to me."

Kaname chuckled and shook his head. "I gave rise to the hunters, Zero. Back then, even if I stood on my head, you would not have talked to me. I know how hunters detest and distrust a pureblood. _I_ gave them the reason to."

Such a simple reason. He wanted company. He wanted someone to share the long road with, even if briefly. Even if he knew that even if Zero had his blood, Zero would still eventually fade away along the journey. It was the same reason that compelled him to create Seiren. Just to have people to actually _talk to_.

"You still did not have the right to turn me into this," Zero said, trembling. "You did not have the right. You did not."

"I am pureblood. I am selfish. Do you think I give a damn? I will get what I want because I can. That is my nature as a vampire."

With an anguished cry Zero raised Bloody Rose with both hands. The silver vines came as a rush, from the gun itself and then burying deep in Zero's arms, partaking of his blood and writhing all around him. Kaname was unfazed where he sat. He did not even move a finger when Bloody Rose started to wrap him in her thorny grasp. A gash appeared on Kaname's cheek made by one of Bloody Rose's thorns, and thick blood dripped down his cheek.

"Go on then," Kaname whispered. "Kill me if you can."

_I can't kill him. I can't._

The vines retracted first, when Zero calmed down. When they were gone he put Bloody Rose back into his jacket. The gash on Kaname's cheek hadn't healed, and Zero knew it would take half a day to.

He took a hesitant step forward, and when Kaname did not show any objection, Zero dropped onto his knees and reached up, and licked the blood off his master's cheek. Kaname tensed, and it was the observant kind of tense; he waited if Zero would lose himself again in his bloodlust. Down Zero's end it was difficult to get a hold of himself, having been faced with blood after weeks of no feeding.

Purple made way for red in Zero's eyes as he nuzzled Kaname's ear for permission, his breath hot against the pureblood's pale skin.

Kaname tipped his head as answer, and Zero's mouth closed over his pulse. He'd licked the skin and carefully bit down, and blood flowed. He still fed clumsily, and blood tainted Kaname's dress shirt. With great effort Zero stopped himself after having three mouthfuls of pure blood, and drew back. Kaname had a hand on his cheek.

"Very good," Kaname spoke softly, looking at him. "Control yourself."

His hand then moved to Zero's nape, and he swooped down and bit into the brand burned onto Zero's neck. The pain flashed deep but briefly, making Zero cry out. He relaxed into it even though his heart beat furiously, as Kaname drew three mouthfuls of blood from him. Mouth bloody, Kaname finished his feeding and kissed him afterward. Their tongues touched as Zero eagerly tried to lap up his blood as well, caught up in the haze of bloodlust.

Kaname's hands found fistfuls of Zero's jacket, and the pureblood easily yanked it off, and let it fall to the floor. Grabbing Zero's shirt next, Kaname let himself fall back into the sarcophagus, taking Zero along with him, their mouths still locked in a bloody kiss.

* * *

If Zero found love-making inside a sarcophagus off-putting, his mind did not have enough willpower to question the oddity of their venue at that moment. The two of them only bothered to remove their lower garments at that time. Zero grasped both sides of the marble box as he sought to keep his balance on his master, straddled as he was, following his thrumming instinct and need with every vicious push downward onto Kaname's center.

_Cant—stop—_

"Ah-!"

_Move—keep moving—_

"D-damn-!"

_I can't—_

"Zero…!"

_Down—_

A half-strangled cry escaped Kaname's lips as his hands grasped Zero by the waist and pulled him down just as he'd arched. Climax overtook his master then, as Zero watched. Kaname's eyes were inhumanly red and aglow from within, his fangs at their full length. The silver-haired hunter thought he had never encountered another sight more frightening yet desirable in his life.

With a low growl Kaname half-sat up and bit into his neck again, and screaming with the pain, Zero reached his heated climax too, his mind muddled with pleasure. The orgasm left him shaking, with Kaname still by his neck. Slowly, Kaname withdrew and lay back down panting, and Zero knew he wouldn't be able to stand in the next hour.

He slumped over his master, their foreheads touching, their breaths mingling.

"Orgasm in a jar," Kaname murmured thickly. "I think I need…somehow…"

"Hurts…" Zero said softly. He had never let anyone take him like this. It hurt, and yet, it felt a hundred ways good, too.

"With the way you were in a hurry, I really think you deserve the pain, you know…"

He opened his eyes and found Kaname looking at him. Their noses touched. Zero didn't know where the blush came from, but it came on, and he didn't know whether to be startled or embarrassed that he blushed at all. Even Kaname looked surprised.

"Zero Kiryuu knows how to blush…?" the pureblood smiled.

"Shut the fuck up," Zero snarled faintly as he buried his face by Kaname's neck.

He felt Kaname wrap arms around his waist.

"I don't know if this is awkward or amusing, or adorable."

"Just shut up. Shut up."

"As you wish."

Zero kept his eyes shut.

_I think I'm…_

* * *

Everyone in the headquarters noticed the calm that surrounded him in the next few weeks he came in for work. Even Kaito Takamiya wondered what he ate, and pegged it that he was finally allowing himself to have a proper relationship with a girl. His parents never voiced their questions, but his mother looked relieved most of all, though she didn't say anything.

The order instructing all Kiryuu hunters to refrain from field work was lifted by the time summer had come to an end. But the good news did not last long; the hunters received information that the master of the Hanadagi family had been murdered in his own castle. When investigations were had, it was discovered that the murder had taken place months ago, and the hunters were thrown a-flurry at the time gap.

Zero knew the vampire end was having trouble too; Kaname was rarely home and when he came in it was really late, and he did not have time to talk about anything at all. He would just hang his coat and withdraw into the library or the mausoleum, and keep himself shut up for hours on end. Zero let his master do as he pleased; he had his own job to take care of. He was made part of the investigation team alongside Kaito and Kaien Cross.

The one point everyone agreed on was that whoever broke into Castle Hanadagi had to be Ouri's murderer. The Ouri family was known for their nullifying skills and abilities, unmatched by other vampire clans, even the Kuran family. But the question remained – who actually dealt the killing blow?

That cloudy afternoon Zero trailed after Kaien Cross and Kaito Takamiya as they visited Izaya Shoutou's manor. Izaya was an old friend of Kaien's, and he had just recently woken up from a 50-year nap. Kaien thought it wise to forewarn his friend of the current events.

They were met by a servant, a woman in a French maid uniform, by the gates. She conducted them to her master's receiving area and served them tea and waffles. It was an entire hour before Izaya Shoutou joined them. Izaya was tall and thin, with pale blonde hair that reached his nape. He particularly had a sleepy look about him, and even his voice sounded sleepy.

Zero was happy to let Kaien and Kaito do the talking, content as he was with his tea.

"So that's all really, I just thought I'd drop by and tell you to keep your nose clean," Kaien was laughing pleasantly as their visit came to an end.

Izaya Shoutou nodded and bowed. "Thank you for the warning. I'll keep my hair free from nettles, of course. I just woke up, for god's sakes. I don't need trouble right now."

Kaien clapped his vampire friend by the shoulder, and they soon filed out of the Shoutou mansion.

Zero was just about to step into the vehicle they'd taken along when his senses felt the tell-tale tingle. He froze one leg already in the truck. He only had a few seconds' reaction time before the balcony of Shoutou mansion exploded in a rain of glass and flames.

Kaien was already out of the truck, and so was Kaito. The three of them had their hunter weapons out as they ran back to the now flaming mansion. A huge gout of flame shot up from the burning balcony, followed by Izaya Shoutou falling. Another pureblood was there, clutching Izaya Shoutou by the neck with one hand. With his other hand the attacker held a scythe that Zero would recognize anywhere in the world.

There was a tremendous crash as both purebloods touched ground. There was a scream and Izaya's maid, wielding an axe, dashed out the front door to aid her master. But Izaya's attacker was a hundred times faster. Spinning the Artemis in a wide arc, Kaname attacked, and in one blink of the eye, the head separated itself from the body of the maid, and she was ashes before she hit the ground.

He lowered his scythe blade now, dangerously close to the sputtering Izaya's neck. One swing, and Kaname also decapitated Kaien Cross's old friend.

Zero's mind went blank at that moment.

With a furious shout Kaien Cross hurled his hunter sword toward his friend's murderer. The sword impaled Kaname Kuran by the chest, but there was not even a hint of surprise on his face. And then like a gruesome nightmare he dissolved into shrieking bats, revealing himself as an alter…and the fact that Kaien Cross's sword now resided in the chest of one of the Touma children.

The pureblood boy dropped to his knees, and in vain tried to pull the hunter sword out of his body.

"He….used…me…" he fell down, and by the time they got there, the cracks had spread all around his body.

It was Kaien Cross who extended a hand. But the lightest brush against Touma's cheek was enough, and he shattered and scattered to the wind.

The bats were gone.


	11. Chapter 11

**.11**

He would remember that hell came in glass jars. The blood tablets were capsular in shape, cream-colored, with a ridge in the middle. The note that came with the package explained that the tablets had been tested and it was discovered that they were formulated using contraband – blood extracted from a pureblood vampire. The box contained four huge glass jars, each one filled to the brim with the capsular tablets. They were manufactured by the pharmaceutical branch of the Ichijou Group of Companies, and when Zero let go of the note, a sick feeling rose deep in his gut.

_I don't know a thing. I have been blinded and kept in the dark. I know nothing. Nothing at all._

* * *

They arrived late, too late, by the Hiou estate. Zero could remember that the sun was just setting then, and that the complex of Japanese traditional houses was quiet, almost as silent as the Kuran manor. The servants were all frightened sheep, all of them, huddled as they were by the corners, nobody daring to touch their dying master. Uruki Hiou was lying on the tatami floor, his chest a bloody gaping hole, his heart gouged out. He was choking on his own blood when Kaien Cross got to him, and with his dying breath he gave but one name.

_Kuran._

Zero knew then that it would be pointless to go home and look for Kaname there. He and Seiren would have moved someplace else, somewhere difficult to find, and it struck Zero that for all of their intimacy, he knew nothing of how Kaname's mind worked. Seiren was telling him the truth when she told him she knew more of their master than he did, and at that moment, watching Uruki Hiou turn to dust, Zero couldn't come up with anything rational that would explain the murdering spree Kaname had started.

He wasn't surprised when Kaito Takamiya grabbed him by the collar and wordlessly dumped him at the back of their truck, at the compartment especially enchanted to hold vampires in. He was a servant, and at that moment he had to be in custody. He would be asked questions, and Zero wished he could answer, but he had no answers, just thin air.

He was interrogated by Jinmu and his master, Yagari Toga. The hours crawled by in a painfully slow pace, and the questions were all the same. _Did he know what Kaname Kuran was planning? Was he somehow ordered to obstruct the Hunter Association in any way? Where was Kaname Kuran? Why was he out now, murdering purebloods as if he had lost his mind? Did he in fact lose his mind for some reason? Where was Kaname Kuran? What was he planning? Whom would he strike next?_

"I don't know!" Zero shouted when his patience reached the end. Inside, there was this terrible gnawing. His chest wanted to explode. Butterflies ran amok in his gut, and his hands sweat cold. He felt restless, and he wanted to grab the metal chair he sat on and throw it against the wall just for the sake of something to do. "I don't fucking know where he is, what he's up to, why he's doing all these killings! I don't know! I wish I knew!"

Jinmu was on his feet by then, and Zero understood that the older hunter was seconds away from striking him where he sat. Zero could feel the intense scrutiny from his mentor, the only person who managed to remain calm in the room. Yagari Toga sat motionless, his booted feet propped up against the table as he smoked.

"He's telling the truth," Toga finally spoke. He glanced at Jinmu, and then at Zero. "He doesn't know a thing. You can see it for yourself in his eyes. He's been kept in the dark. There's no point keeping him locked up. We're all busied with this crap that's going on, and we'll need all able-bodied hunters for the days to come. "

* * *

It was Eri Touma who first came to their doorstep asking for shelter and protection the same day the noble court of the vampires released the decree that the throne was held vacant and that they were seizing power in the shadow of the current crisis. The little pureblood girl brought nothing with her except the clothes on her back and a brown teddy bear. Judging by her tousled hair and the filth on her clothes, the hunters came to the conclusion that their house had been attacked too, and that she was the more fortunate one, as she had escaped. When Kaien Cross let her in against the majority of the hunters' better judgments, Eri Touma explained that she'd escaped when her brother was abducted by hiding in the broom cupboard for two days, and then she left her home and hid away for a week, before deciding that the hunters' headquarters was the only safe place for her now.

She said that she knew of no reason why Kaname Kuran would want to go after her. However, she also pointed out that her brother struck first in a fit of _hubris_ – her brother attacked Kaname Kuran one evening when the pureblood king was on his way home. But surely, Eri pleaded with them, that did not merit her brother's gruesome death. Kaien nodded gravely after listening to her story, and agreed.

A few days later and more baffling news reached the hunters – Hanabusa Aidou's father had been killed by Kaname Kuran too, and that Hanabusa was taking over their family's estates and businesses as a result. That one Zero absolutely did not understand. From what he knew of Aidou, he'd always followed Kaname around at school, besotted with whatever the pureblood was doing. Kaname was displeased with the unwanted attention but never sent Hanabusa away, although he did berate him now and then. But that was it. Zero knew Hanabusa was loyal to his master, perhaps even more than he was.

Zero tried to get himself in one of the hunting parties sent to look for Kaname's whereabouts, but his master was on to something, and refused to give him authorization. Zero was furious. He wanted answers, and he knew he would never get them while he was forced to stay put at headquarters. That didn't work with Kaname, and never would. If one wanted answers from Kaname Kuran, you had to go after him. Waiting for him to explain was a fool's hope. Zero's questions would remain unanswered, unless Kaname himself would come here again.

* * *

When the first leaves started to fall for autumn, Sara Shirabuki now turned up on the door, with her entourage of formerly human girls and a person Zero never thought he would see with her – Takuma Ichijou. But the Takuma Ichijou that entered the building was different from the Ichijou that Zero remembered from school. The Vice President of the Night Class had been a lively person, not this dull, grave and sorry-looking creature.

_He's on a leash,_ Zero thought as he watched Takuma follow Sara obediently inside. _On a leash held by her, and he cannot break free._

"I fear for my life," Sara told them. "Kaname Kuran is going after me next, I am sure of it. I do not wish to die like old man Hiou, or Izaya Shoutou." She paused, and her lower lip trembled. "Or my fiancé Ouri. I do not wish to meet my end at his hands."

Whispers arose among the hunters, and many exchanged incredulous glances. Zero pushed himself off the wall he'd been leaning on and parted the crowd as he went forward. He stood in front of Sara, and he could not help but look her from head to toe.

"Where is your proof of this murder?" Zero said. "An errant imputation will not help in these troubled times. We have direct proof Kaname committed all the other murders, but the one you lay now before us has none."

A flicker registered in Ichijou's dead green eyes.

Sara could not answer immediately, and Zero decided that made her the untrustworthy one. But she drew herself up. "I just know it. He killed Ouri too. I know it."

"Knowing does not mean certainty," Zero shot back.

She allowed herself a faint smile. "Valiantly defending your master, are you…?"

Kaien Cross spared him the need to answer by stepping between the two of them. "Very well. On my authority as the president, we will grant you temporary sanctuary within these walls."

Yagari Toga looked furious, but whatever it was he wanted to say, he kept to himself for now. Zero watched as Kaito and other hunters led away Sara and her entourage.

_This can't be good. I can't know what's happening if I remain cooped up here any longer. I have to get out and find him myself, that bastard._

He felt Bloody Rose react to his feelings then, and Zero had to grab his right arm to stay the vines from twining up his sleeve.

"You're giving yourself away, Zero."

He turned and found that his master had stayed behind, and was now watching him.

"If you're not careful, you'll be back in the interrogation room again, this time with torture until you give us the answer you're hiding."

_What?_

Toga stood before him and stared him down. Zero met the gaze steadily, holding his ground.

"You've been drinking his blood, have you?" Toga asked the question as quietly as he could. "And because of it, you have grown attached to him. Don't lie to me, stupid apprentice, I'm no idiot. The killing intent that drove you from the years past is gone from you, I can see it clearly. You've let your anger go. And now something else has taken its place. Something that can destroy you completely if you acknowledge it."

Zero could not say anything to those words.

"I hope that you won't go here one day looking the same as that poor vampire Sara Shirabuki's got with her. There's nothing sorrier to me and more deserving of death than someone whose mind has been taken over completely by a different kind of bloodlust. You get that through your thick skull, Zero."

* * *

The backpack was small, but Zero decided it would do. He moved about purposefully in his quarters, packing some clothes into the bag, alongside some clips of bullets and whatever food he could find. He pulled the zipper shut and swung the bag onto his back when the door opened and light spilled into his room. Zero whipped around and found his mother standing by the doorway, a confused look on her face.

"Zero…? What are you…?"

He couldn't look into her eyes. Zero dropped his gaze.

"I can't stay cooped up here, mother. I have to go. I have to find him, and ask him why he's doing all these things myself."

Silence. And then his mother entered the room completely and peered up at him.

"…What makes you think he'll answer you, Zero?"

"He'll answer me," He replied. _He will answer me. He won't hide this from me. He told me why he turned me, and after that, I don't think he'd hide anything from me now._ "I know he will."

"You're not yourself, Zero, look at me. _Look at me!_"

Reluctantly, he did, and met his mother's gaze. They stared at each other in silence, and slowly, she let his arms go.

"I don't understand," she said softly. "He matters to you…? This same person who turned you…he's important to you now."

Zero grit his teeth and gave the acknowledgement, that small thing that he knew he would probably regret forever. "_Yes_. I have to find him, mother."

He wished he did not have to look at her face then. She didn't understand, and she probably never would. But nonetheless she stepped aside, much to his surprise. He walked past her and out the door, but she pulled his sleeve and stopped him.

"Wait, you cannot go without authorization."

She fumbled in her pockets and handed him her hunt order. Zero took the paper, speechless.

"Go and find your master, Zero."

He squeezed his mother's hand and nodded. "I'll come back. I promise."

* * *

Zero was halfway up the stairs that led to the main lobby when the alarms sounded, signaling a breach. He tried to run for it, but the emergency lockdown had started and ended before he could reach the doorway, and with a clang, the fortified iron grilles closed off all entries and exits separating the upper floors of the main building from the basements. Cursing, Zero backtracked and looked about, thinking furiously. He dashed and went to find where the Touma girl was hiding, almost sure that his master would already be there.

_Why are you doing this now, Kaname?_

Most of the hunters would be by the upper floors now; the lockdown was also implemented to deter Kaname from reaching the lower floors, especially the dungeons. Zero ran for one of the elevators and hurriedly pressed 3B, cursing softly as the doors slid shut, and the elevator started its descent underground.

He had Bloody Rose out and ready when the elevator doors hissed open. Already the red emergency lights were on at this part of the headquarters, and Zero was sure that it would be the same for the lower floors. He advanced slowly, keeping his senses attuned, intent on getting to the room where Eri Touma was being kept.

_Why are you doing this?_

His own footsteps sounded oddly to his hearing. He didn't understand a single thing of this event. It was a new scheme, something else that Kaname had planned, and judging by the way he was kept out of the loop, he wasn't intended to be part of it. But Zero knew he would not let himself be kept out from this one; if Kaname succeeded with whatever bloody end he planned, the only path open to his master would either be execution or suicide. Zero could not fathom why Kaname was hell-bent on careening toward such ends. He knew nothing. And every passing second he was aware, and he hated it even more.

The smell of blood flooded Zero's senses, and it came suddenly, startling him. Blood had just been spilled. Zero shifted into a run, Bloody Rose's vines trailing in his wake, writhing around him and twining up his arm. He rounded the corner, and found that Eri Touma's door had been ripped from the walls.

He had half a second to realize that Takuma Ichijou was standing outside as a look-out before he raised Bloody Rose and attacked, the vines forming the maw of a gigantic wolf and smashing into the noble, burying him in all the thorns and getting him out of the way.

Zero skidded into a halt and looked within the cell. Sara Shirabuki had just consumed herself the heart of the Touma girl, and the girl's body was crumpled by her feet. Her mouth and hands were a bloody mess.

_The murdering bitch,_ was Zero's immediate thought as things clicked inside his head. Ouri's murderer. Hanadagi's murderer, most likely. And now, murderer of the last member of the Touma family.

"Bloody Rose!" he cried, and a huge tangle of vines separated themselves from the group that kept Takuma Ichijou at bay, and went for Sara Shirabuki.

The woman exploded into a swarm of black widow spiders and scuttled all around the floor, avoiding the thrashing vines and getting away. With an angry snarl Zero gave Bloody Rose a yank, and the vines left Takuma Ichijou on the floor, his body covered in wounds where Bloody Rose pierced him and drank his blood. He was unconscious. Zero then raced after the spiders, Bloody Rose attacking as he willed it, and the vines impaled as many scuttling spider they could reach, squashing them like the bugs that they were, and they exploded into digusting gobs of blood on the floor and walls.

Many spiders still managed to flee to safety, and far ahead Sara Shirabuki reformed hastily. Zero felt satisfaction to see that she was wounded, but her wounds were superficial and would not stall her. She dashed off round the corner ahead, and Zero followed her, and Bloody Rose's vines regrouped and writhed behind him.

He rounded the corner too, and ahead was a dead end except for a vent. Sara was trapped. Zero raised his weapon and the silver vines surged forward, pulling Sara into their thorny embrace of death…

But to his horror, the moment Bloody Rose started to drink Sara's blood, the vines blackened and writhed, and Zero felt poison inside his system. Laughing evilly Sara grabbed the vines by hand and tore them off her, and they fell to the ground and they dried up and died. Pain attacked Zero from inside, making him fall to his knees, and black veins started spreading up his arm, crawling up, up, to his neck.

He gasped out blood and Sara kicked him, making him fall flat on his back. She had one foot on his chest; her shoe's deadly heel aimed exactly where his heart would be.

"The Ouri family was the only clan who could nullify another vampire family's abilities," She laughed silkily at him. "Not even the Kurans came up with a counter to this power. And so I have the upper hand here, you understand?"

She shifted her leg, and Zero knew that she planned to destroy his heart with her heel, and then she would walk away as he turned to dust. But out of the corner of his failing vision he could see blood pool and drip down the air vent behind Sara. The blood writhed up and Kaname reformed his upper body out of it, the rest of him remaining as grisly tendrils of red connected to the crimson river.

Sara sensed it too, and she gave a widening of her blue eyes and whipped around, just in time as Kaname gave Artemis a swing, and the blow was clean and quick, and Sara's head was severed from her body, fell to the floor and rolled. Her headless body thrashed about aimlessly, almost gruesome in its clumsiness.

Zero gasped, the poison blood reaching far into him by now. He sensed Kaname somewhere above him, and he smelled his master's blood. Soon he felt the hot trickle of blood being offered into his mouth, and he eagerly parted his lips for it. Kaname had picked him up and cradled him close, and was now giving him blood through a kiss.

Slowly, the pain started to retreat, and subside. Zero's vision started clearing, and when it did, he saw his master peering down at him. For the briefest of seconds, nothing else mattered to Zero then. He reached up a hand and touched Kaname's cheek, and Kaname leaned close to his hand, almost nuzzling his palm.

"The murdering bitch," Zero croaked painfully. "She was responsible…!"

"I know," Kaname replied simply. "But she has poisoned you, and you will need rest. I have done the best I can for you."

His other hand grasped Kaname's shirt, and his purple eyes widened.

"No—you have to get away from here—you have to-!"

His master turned his gaze elsewhere, and Zero was suddenly aware of the presence of a lot of hunters in the vicinity. Kaname let him slip down slowly from his arms and onto the floor, and Zero, unable to move, watched as Kaname got to his feet and let Artemis fall from his hand too. He heard his master Yagari Toga's voice, followed by gunshots, and Kaname took the bullets squarely in his chest and he fell, and Zero screamed soundlessly, and the world was lost in darkness.

* * *

He opened his eyes and could remember staring up at the white ceiling, and his nose registered the smell of antiseptic next. His legs felt leaden as well as his left arm, and he couldn't feel his right arm at all. For a while he lay there, not understanding a thing. And then he remembered.

Yagari Toga's voice.

Gunshots.

Bullets.

Kaname falling.

With a burst of strength Zero sat up on the infirmary bed, gasping for breath. His mother, who had been sitting watching over him, was easily on her feet.

"Zero! Zero, thank god, we thought you wouldn't wake up!"

She hugged him to her, and Zero could not do anything, his mind waking up completely and processing things in a rush of adrenaline.

Kaname. He had to find his master. He had to know that his master was still alive.

"How…" he managed. "How long have I been…?"

"Two days," his mother replied as she cupped his face. "All that poison in your system, we really thought…"

He decided then. But he couldn't let his poor, sweet mother know. He held her by the wrists and looked at her face, committing it all to memory – her lavender eyes, her silver hair, her small and perfect nose.

"I'm fine, mother. I'm all right now."

_I have to find him. And then…to whatever happens to us both now._

* * *

Frankly, Kaname was surprised they didn't execute him on sight. He took four bullets to his chest, and each one cost him a world of pain, and nullified all of his healing abilities in an instant. It was futile to fight, and when he fell to his knees the hunters surrounded him and took him away. He had been in this cell since; a fortified chain clamped around his neck and fastened to the wall, where a hunter's restraining charm was currently active.

The two days passed him in silence and solitude, and he sat down by his corner, lightly fumbling with his chain. He knew the hunters weren't stupid, and they placed him in a dungeon where there were no doors and no guards, just the chain and the restraining charm and a five-foot thick metal door for company.

His work was done, and he had ceased caring what the vampire society would do for him now. He sat there, waiting that his fate this time was certain. He could almost taste his death; it was so near. It would be a decapitation for him. A hunter stake through his heart, and then a decapitation. And here it was that his road would end.

_Finally._

He turned his head when the metal door's inner workings sounded, to eventually give way to a resounding clang as it hissed open. Kaito Takamiya entered his cell, his arms raised. He looked furious, and then a hand clutching Bloody Rose gave him a swift blow to the nape, and he crumpled down without a fight, unconscious. Kaname stared in silence as Zero entered his cell. His servant moved with purpose, approaching him, touching the chain that bound him as if studying it intently. And then Zero murmured some incantations, and the restraining charm faded and dissolved.

"Close your eyes," Zero told him as he'd stepped back and raised Bloody Rose.

Kaname turned away briefly and there was a bang, and the chain fell away from his neck. It left a nasty red welt around his throat.

"Come on, get up," Zero said, holding him by the hand and attempting to pull him up.

"Where are we going?" Kaname asked quietly, his eyes intent on Zero's face.

"I'm taking you out of here."

"And go where?"

"I don't know. Somewhere safe."

"There is nowhere safe in this world now for me. You know this."

"Shut up and cooperate with me here, Kaname. Get up. For christ's sakes, _get up_."

He didn't move. He could see Zero gritting his teeth. His little hunter reeked of anger and despair. And something else more passionate.

"_Come on, Kaname!_" Zero pleaded.

He grasped Zero by the chin, and made the hunter look him in the eyes. "Do you understand what you're doing, Zero? If you let me out here, you will spend the rest of your life running. What of your parents?"

There was no answer, just this definite set to Zero's jaw and the sheer determination in his eyes. He was throwing everything away, at that moment, for him. Kaname did not let go, but instead grasped Zero tighter.

"You don't know how tiring it is to run, Zero," He continued. "One can only run so far, and for so long. Even your strength will not last."

"I don't care why you killed all of them," Zero hissed. "I don't fucking care. Fuck all the treaties, fuck all the laws, I will not lose you here. I don't care. You don't have to explain."

Kaname felt his resolve start to waver. But he would not let this festering weakness best him again.

"Go with me, Kaname," Zero was pleading with him now. "Go with me. We'll find somewhere-!"

He loosened his grip, and slowly shook his head. In Zero's eyes he saw heartbreak.

"I'm not going, Zero."

"You have to go with me, Kaname, because I lo-!"

He had a hand over Zero's lips, stopping the words before they got out. Kaname did not need to hear those three words. If he heard them, he would be giving name to his feelings, and once he gave name to his feelings he would acknowledging it, and the weakness it brought. His resolve would fall apart completely, and he would remain here…nothing but a piece of scum capable only of obsession. He did not want to hear it. He _refused_ to hear it. He would have none of it.

He allowed himself the faintest of a smile. "I did not expect you to feel this way. But it seems I have miscalculated. But I will not let you follow this path, because the ones purebloods get attached to get destroyed in the end. And so I am…picking up the pieces for you…now."

His eyes glowed red as he activated the spell, and bound Zero to his place, there on his knees. Kaname shifted, wrapped his arms around the silver-haired hunter and closed his eyes.

"Such a sweet sorrow you are. If only I had known you earlier. But there is no other path for me now, except the end."

Blood started to trickle down his forehead. In his arms, he could feel Zero struggling with all his might. An anguished cry escaped the lips of his hunter, yet Kaname was an impenetrable wall, and would not budge. More blood trickled from him, and soon pooled on the floor around them, staining their clothes.

"And so now," Kaname said, his lips touching Zero's ear. "I ask for your forgiveness."


	12. Terminus

**.Terminus**

For Kaito Takamiya, it was the explanation part that had to be the most difficult of all. He knew that it was none of his business how the Kiryuu parents picked up their remaining child's life for him, but he could not agree to the fact that they had to explain everything, and let Zero start his new slate on the biggest lie in his entire life.

When he woke up, his mother and father were there, while Kaito stood beside their master Yagari Toga outside the hospital room, watching through the window. Zero's face was nothing except confusion when he'd woken, and by the way his lips moved, he asked for Ichiru first of all. Kaito watched as his mother held his hand, and then the explanation started.

Zero's expression changed from confusion, to incredulity, and finally to weeping. Kaito watched as Zero was embraced by his mother. Hopefully, he told himself, this would be the last time Zero would land himself in a hospital.

"Do you have them?" Yagari Toga spoke up beside him.

"I have them," Kaito replied, his eyes still on the scene at the other side of the glass window. "But will he be allowed to continue as one of us?"

"No," the answer came shortly. "It is for his best interests that he be honorably discharged from our association. It's a big loss, considering his talent, but all the higher-ups have agreed that he has had enough."

"I never expected. Zero, of all people. To actually be…_fond_…of that person. Was he brainwashed? Degraded from the inside, like Takuma Ichijou?" Zero might not remember, but Kaito would, and he was sure he'd remember it for the rest of his life, too. He would remember the despair in Zero's eyes as he turned his gun on him, and made him open the metal door. At that moment, Kaito was sure, Zero would have done anything in the world had Kaname Kuran asked him. And it wasn't even the command of a pureblood to a lower ranking vampire anymore. Zero would do anything for Kaname Kuran out of his own volition. He had fallen deep, painfully deep, and Kaito understood it then.

But now Zero would not remember anything. Not even the all-consuming passion he had once felt. That kind of passion that came but once, and would never repeat itself in a person's lifetime.

Kaito didn't understand it, but he felt sorry for Zero.

"You know as well as I do that Zero is never one to be brainwashed," Toga answered.

Kaito turned from the window and walked away, hands in his pockets.

* * *

Zero finished high school with flying colors, but he'd graduated three years late, and not from Cross Academy. He went on to pursue a degree in Humanities, like what Ichiru had wanted, and after graduating at the top of his class he worked for his teacher's license next and was soon working at a co-ed middle school as literature and grammar teacher. As fair as Kaito Takamiya knew, Zero Kiryuu was thriving in his normal human life. At some point he'd reunited with a classmate from cross, Shindo Nadeshiko, and the two dated and formed a relationship.

Kaito observed everything from a distance. It was going well, but something inside him wouldn't let him rest easy at the newfound life of his once hunter trainee partner. He had no business to meddle, really. Zero was already at peace. But Kaito had always believed that peace meant nothing if you were living a lie. Zero had a right to the truth, and to his memories, after everything that had happened, he deserved it more.

So Kaito went to headquarters and tricked Kaien Cross into signing an authorization for him. An hour later he exited the building, a suitcase in his hand. Perhaps this was going to work, or maybe not. He didn't have any plan. But Zero had to have these two things returned to him, at least.

* * *

It was a bright and sunny Saturday afternoon when Kaito knocked on the door of the apartment Zero shared with Shindo. He waited for several minutes before the door opened, and Zero greeted him with a smile.

"Kaito! What a pleasant surprise, come in, come in – I was just grilling some hamburgers at the back!"

He stepped inside the house. Everything was cozy and homey, tempered with a woman's touch. As Zero scuttled to prepare him some lemonade, Kaito remained standing with the suitcase at his side, and looked at the framed photos by the fireplace. In each shot Zero was smiling happily with his girlfriend.

"Can you wait for fifteen minutes? The burgers will be ready. Shindo's out with her girl friends. Movies and shopping, I never can stand a woman when she goes shopping, you know? Why don't you sit down?"

"I'm good," Kaito let himself smile as he sat down on the couch.

They talked about their jobs, and Zero confessed that he still regretted that the car accident that claimed Ichiru from his side had made him unfit to be a fully-pledged hunter. But he also said that teaching wasn't bad, and possibly more stressful than a hunter's work. Kaito let him do most of the talking, for a moment struck at how he could be talkative.

"Oh yeah, before I forget," Kaito decided that if there was a good time to brook the topic, it was now. "I have something for you. Old stuff from the headquarters you haven't taken home."

"Huh?" Zero frowned lightly. "I really thought I'd cleared out my locker empty."

"No, you didn't."

Kaito had the suitcase in front of Zero. He keyed-in the combinations for the locks, and the suitcase hissed open. Inside was Bloody Rose, silver chain and all. Beside it was the Artemis rod, retracted. Zero stared blankly at the two hunter weapons, and Kaito watched him intently for any reaction at all.

"….I don't remember having been given a weapon," Zero said softly as he extended a hesitant hand toward Bloody Rose.

His fingers closed in around the gun's handle, and something stirred within him, a flutter of memory. He lifted Bloody Rose up, and the chain hung by his waist. A flicker of something at the deepest recesses of his mind, from a place that he didn't know existed.

Kaito hoped he was on the right track. He stayed silent as Zero examined the gun, his expression confused. Then Zero's eyes landed on the other hunter weapon in the suitcase. His mouth compressed itself into a thin line, and his hand trembled as he reached for it. He picked Artemis up and ran his fingers over its details, and a tickle of memory, and he pressed the right area and gave a pull.

There was a sharp ring of metal as the scythe outstretched, its blade forming the deadly arc. Zero stared up at it, and his eyes clouded for the briefest of seconds and cleared. Kaito watched as realization dawned on Zero's face, as the memory seal shattered into millions of pieces inside him.

"You remember who owned this scythe, Zero?" Kaito said quietly. "You remember him now, Zero. I don't know how right I am, but he was very important to you. I've no business doing this to you at all, but living with a tragedy of the past is always better than living a lie."

Zero dropped the Artemis onto the carpet. He gave an anguished cry as he held his head with both hands, and then he broke down completely as Kaito watched, tears flowing from both of his eyes. He wept, and he screamed words Kaito couldn't understand, but he remembered now, remembered every little thing, every feeling and every truth that had been forcefully wiped from his mind as he was turned back into a human being.

* * *

By the world train, the trip would take him two hours. By the train stop he would get a taxi, and the drive would last for twenty minutes to the small town. From the small town he would go north, picking up the dirt path when the town's cobblestone ended, and he would follow it, until all the pine trees would give way for the dead ones. Walking on he would pass the aqueduct, and further northward he would see the mansion's roofing, and he would be standing in front of the vast but quiet house, with its windows curtained like closed eyes. Behind the house he would see the faint outline of mountains if the clouds were relenting. The frozen lake would be beautiful especially against the sunset, the ice would be glimmering like a mirage, and if you took a moment you would wonder if the lake was there at all.

The house was exactly where it stood, the windows blank and the curtains closed. He could not sense anyone now within the house. He wondered where Seiren was now, and if she would come back if he'd called her.

Inside, everything was familiar. He walked into the hall and found Kaname's last book still on the table. He'd picked up the book and opened it to the bookmarked page, and he brought it to his nose and inhaled the smell of parchment.

He half-turned, almost expecting Kaname to be there on his favorite chair, sitting down playing chess alone or writing. And Kaname would look up surprised to see him there. But he was alone in the house, and nothing would change.

He knew he couldn't make the trip to the basement yet, to the underground mausoleum and the gray sarcophagus on the dais. He did not have the strength to make that trip yet, but one day, he hoped he would. When that day came he knew that he would be at peace with Kaname then, at peace with his memories, at peace with what Kaname had done for him. But right now, he knew in his heart that he could not forgive Kaname just yet.

Zero pulled his jacket close as he exited the manor through the back door, and walked toward the greenhouses by the lake's frozen shore. Nothing had changed for the first two greenhouses. But all the rosebushes had died when he came into the third greenhouse, because nobody had taken care of them anymore.

Standing by the doorway Zero assessed the work that had to be done, and he decided to go inside and uproot all the dead bushes first, and clear all the weeds. Then he would plant all the roses anew and make them bloom. The only problem was Zero didn't know how Kaname grew blue roses in the first place, but he had the rest of his life to figure out how.

Putting the working gloves on and picking up a garden shear, Zero started to work.

**End**


End file.
